GK Chesterton 101

[rusmeister]

Few people know about this author - he was excluded from public school programs largely due to his faith (although his friend and arch-foe the atheist George Bernard Shaw got full access to high school English classes) which becomes all too apparent after reading a few pages of most of his works.

Among 20th century authors he is the greatest defender of the Christian faith, and though he converted from (old) Anglicanism to Catholicism later in his life, it can be said fairly truly that outside of his remarks on the Papacy and specific post-schism saints, anywhere he says 'Catholic' you can confidently insert 'Orthodox'. Nowhere have I found any indication that he had any significant knowledge of Eastern Orthodoxy, and I am of the opinion that he went to the closest thing he could find to the Church of Christ (this is open to correction, but I've read quite a bit over the past year and a half).

What I'd like to do here is provide links via which you can, with little time and effort, better acquaint yourself with the thinker who set CS Lewis straight, and outclasses just about anyone now living in terms of sheer common sense. He was a master of paradox (it helps to understand that a paradox is really an apparent contradiction, rather than an actual contradiction), which is succinct expression of complex reality, and of expressing it in (often humorous) one-liners expressing deep truths.

I also would like to post quotations from his works here, as often as I can. Quotations can provide 'soundbite' versions that give you a quick sense of the man's intelligence and depth.

Finally, I'd like to repeat my little trilemma - that people who knock Chesterton either:

a) do not understand him*
b) are atheists** that desperately need to debunk him, or
c) simply haven't read him yet

*the highest complement you can pay to a genius is to admit that his work is too deep for you
** in some cases Protestants

Enough said. Here is a pretty good introduction:


And a starter quote:

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around." - Orthodoxy, 1908

 

[Protoevangel]

Chesterton is amazing! I have only read two of his books, Heretics, and Orthodoxy. They are both, however among the best books I have ever read.


I love the quote you provided, but I think the whole paragraph that your quote was pulled out of deserves to be quoted:

Orthodoxy
The Ethics of Elfland

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

 

[Protoevangel]

Another favorite Chesterton quote:

Heretics
Concluding Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy

The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut. Man can hardly be defined, after the fashion of Carlyle, as an animal who makes tools; ants and beavers and many other animals make tools, in the sense that they make an apparatus. Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human. When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined scepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.

 

[rusmeister]

Hey, I agree completely, but one of my goals here is to get people who don't want to commit a lot of time to read him (they don't yet know why they should) a little.
Then they'll read a little more. Then a little more...

People who think he was merely a child of his time (a stuffy, old-fashioned, anti-woman reactionary bigot or whatever) are in for a pleasant surprise!

The whole book deserves to be quoted! But first you have to attract the fish to the bait and get them to nibble!

 

[Protoevangel]

Hey, I agree completely, but one of my goals here is to get people who don't want to commit a lot of time to read him (they don't yet know why they should) a little.
Then they'll read a little more. Then a little more...

People who think he was merely a child of his time (a stuffy, old-fashioned, anti-woman reactionary bigot or whatever) are in for a pleasant surprise!

The whole book deserves to be quoted! But first you have to attract the fish to the bait and get them to nibble!

God point, I'll go back into my posts and bold the diamonds among the pearls.

 

[paleodoxy]

Heresy and Orthodoxy have been collecting dust on my bookshelf for years, and I *still* haven't read it. I think during my holiday Thanksgiving/Christmas reading I'll have to crack open Mr. Chesterton. I really want to read The Everlasting Man.

 

[BuriedtoBloom]

Excellent thread, rusmeister.

My movement toward the Ancient Way was significantly precipitated by reading Orthodoxy. Chesterton helped me to embrace a sense of paradoxical wonder when considering the Faith in light of the witness and communion of all the saints. Just in the reading of that book, I felt my grasp of Truth become less propositional and more personal. I highly recommend his works, of which I've only read The Man Who Was Thursday, Orthodoxy, and Manalive - the latter is a brilliant and fittingly humorous allegory of Man in unending pursuit of union with God, the end result of which is a truly human normality that to the world seems insanity. (Innocent Smith, the hero, is much like a fool-for-Christ, and he helped me to appreciate that path of Orthodox monasticism.) I am hoping to read The Everlasting Man soon.

A favorite quote of mine:

"Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature, but it is fixed forever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape. Because it has paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travelers." Orthodoxy, ch. 'The Maniac', G. K. Chesterton

[Edit]: Oh, and I've read all the Father Brown stories, which are often equally apologetical and enjoyable as his lengthier works...

 

[Thekla]

some of theses quotes are wonderful ...

please don't put another book on my pile !!!

 

[paleodoxy]

please don't put another book on my pile !!!

The story of my life

 

[tekiahteruah]

Rusmeister,

I wouldn't say that Chesterton was entirely disposed to Eastern Orthodoxy. He criticizes the Christian east in St. Francis of Assisi. He preferred the Western humanism (i.e. the personalism of suffering, wounds, realistic statues, and so on) of St. Francis to what he viewed as a Byzantine overemphasis on divinity.

He also has a worldview (phronema) that is some cases is uniquely Roman Catholic. He particularly was very shaped by the romance of western Christianity in the Middle Ages. I don't think this is a bad thing; I think it's part of who he is. While he obviously can be read by Orthodox, we shouldn't pretend that he wasn't who he was.

 

[Gwendolyn]

I first came upon Chesterton one day while I was supposed to be studying in the university library. I found a very tiny little book wedged in between some larger volumes and decided to pick it up. I cannot quite recall which book it was, but I remember being shocked by how blatantly he spoke out against the errors of his former Anglican/Protestant faith. I had become so used to relativistic approaches that I first found his manner to be somewhat abrupt (though surely some of it is due to feeling cheated and very disillusioned by protestantism). But now I appreciate his intellect. He certainly does have some good insights, even if I do not always agree with what he says.

 

[tekiahteruah]

Also, I am surprised you have met so many Chesterton "knockers"... of people I know that have read him, I only know of admirers... including atheists, agnostics, and liberal New Agers. He is someone that can be loved and respected even when one does not agree with him.

 

[Xpycoctomos]

Hey, I agree completely, but one of my goals here is to get people who don't want to commit a lot of time to read him (they don't yet know why they should) a little.
Then they'll read a little more. Then a little more...

People who think he was merely a child of his time (a stuffy, old-fashioned, anti-woman reactionary bigot or whatever) are in for a pleasant surprise!

The whole book deserves to be quoted! But first you have to attract the fish to the bait and get them to nibble!

Great thread and concept behind the thread.

I have a question and it is not to challenge but to understand.

Inlight of this part that proto pasted:

Chesterton
Orthodoxy
The Ethics of Elfland

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

How does that fit in with the idea that the masses have seemed to go crazy here where 70-ish% of the US support BC in the middle schools among the myriad of other horrors that it seems the majority of the US supports that clearly go against tradition.

I know I am missing something here, but could you or others speak to this?

Thanks.

 

[rusmeister]

Rusmeister,

I wouldn't say that Chesterton was entirely disposed to Eastern Orthodoxy. He criticizes the Christian east in St. Francis of Assisi. He preferred the Western humanism (i.e. the personalism of suffering, wounds, realistic statues, and so on) of St. Francis to what he viewed as a Byzantine overemphasis on divinity.

He also has a worldview (phronema) that is some cases is uniquely Roman Catholic. He particularly was very shaped by the romance of western Christianity in the Middle Ages. I don't think this is a bad thing; I think it's part of who he is. While he obviously can be read by Orthodox, we shouldn't pretend that he wasn't who he was.

Thanks, Tekiah!
Just to note, I didn't say he was disposed towards EO, I said that he didn't display significant knowledge of Eastern Orthodoxy. And I did read St Francis of Assisi some 6 months ago, and vaguely recall a vague reference to the east, but again, nothing that showed any significant knowledge of it. It was a decidedly blank area in his rather broad education.

You will knock someone as soon as you realize that they disagree with you, and this has happened with discussions of GKC. I have already seen him written off as a misogynist and reactionary - and it compelled me to start a thread where people could really get to know him.

As to a Catholic worldview, yes, for the last 14 years of his life he was Catholic. But he was an apologist, not a theologian, so in those later writings it can be seen pretty clearly when he makes Catholic-specific remarks. And for 20 years prior to that, he was Anglican. But discounting his church affiliation and statements in defense of those churches,what he says, as with Lewis, by and large, true and completely acceptable by Orthodox Christians. This is not saying that he was Orthodox; only that what he says as true of the Catholic Church usually happens to be true about the Orthodox Church.

A great value in his positive view on the Middle Ages is that it provides a necessary antidote for people raised on notions, via bogus history taught in schools and supported by Hollywood tripe, to the popular notions that 'earlier periods of human history were barbaric, but ah, now we are so much wiser and more civilized than they!'

 

[rusmeister]

Great thread and concept behind the thread.

I have a question and it is not to challenge but to understand.

Inlight of this part that proto pasted:


How does that fit in with the idea that the masses have seemed to go crazy here where 70-ish% of the US support BC in the middle schools among the myriad of other horrors that it seems the majority of the US supports that clearly go against tradition.

I know I am missing something here, but could you or others speak to this?

Thanks.

This is a very good question, but I think it would be better as a split off thread. I'd like to keep the number of non-GKC posts to a minimum - the idea is for people to be reading him, not you or me. Could you repost this as another thread, please?

 

[rusmeister]

Lead sites:
http://www.chesterton.org/ (a commercial site where you can learn a lot about GKC quickly. A possible downside - their links are for books to purchase.)

http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/index.html
A great place to get Chesterton's important stuff free online. Also photos and other good stuff. The links offer html, textfiles and zipfiles, as well as a couple of audiobooks. I'll post the html's - you can get the other forms at this site.


OK, so what did this guy write?

Answer:
http://www.chesterton.org/discover/bibliography.htmlhttp://www.chesterton.org/wordpress/g-k-chesterton/
The single most useful page - with a good intro, some samples and quotations.
He wrote in nearly every genre - fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, essays. And he was voluminous. He wrote enough to keep you busy for a few years at least. I've been reading for five years as of this edit.

So what should I read first?

For most people, I'd recommend Orthodoxy (1908). Many consider this his greatest work.

For more committed atheists/agnostics and pagans, I would recommend The Everlasting Man, but would caution that this book requires a little more brain power to read - it's not a quick, light read! Otherwise, set this one aside until you have read Orthodoxy, at least. It is probably his magnum opus, and CS Lewis cited it as the book that helped him the most in his life.

For one who wants to read something short, yet complete, let me offer this essay I got a major kick out of last week (concerning rash vows, such as saying "I do" for the rest of my life):
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/rash_vows.html

Quote of the day:

"Do not enjoy yourself. Enjoy dances and theaters and joy-rides and champagne and oysters; enjoy jazz and cocktails and night-clubs if you can enjoy nothing better; enjoy bigamy and burglary and any crime in the calendar, in preference to the other alternative; but never learn to enjoy yourself." - The Common Man

 

[rusmeister]

What did the man stand for? (ie, What did he believe?)

His main concern was defense of Christianity and common sense against the pluralism that even then was sweeping the world. One of our main notions that is absolutely untrue is that ideas that we hear about today are new. Reading Chesterton we see that there is nothing new under the sun - that Dan Brown, Richard Dawkins, James Cameron, 'postmodernists', pagans, agnostics... aren't saying anything new that wasn't old and dealt with a hundred years ago, and furthermore, that these ideas have existed from antiquity. That people who think they have new ideas to make humanity better or reveal some 'new' proof that Christianity is untrue are simply rehashing very old ideas.

Brief summaries of Chestertonian thinking on various subjects - from consumerism and crime and punishment to career women and the family:
http://www.chesterton.org/discover/nutshells.html

(The big surprise might be in thinking you already know the answer!)

Reading:
If you've read Orthodoxy, Heretics is a good continuation. It was actually written first, and Orthodoxy was written in response to a challenge. It takes on the "heresies" of modern thought, such as negativism, relativism, neo-paganism, puritanism, aestheticism, and individualism.
From the first chapter (a teaser)

It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield Market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the last decadence of the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter, and this is done universally in the twentieth century, in the decadence of the great revolutionary period. General theories are everywhere contemned; the doctrine of the Rights of Man is dismissed with the doctrine of the Fall of Man. Atheism itself is too theological for us to-day. Revolution itself is too much of a system; liberty itself is too much of a restraint. We will have no generalizations. Mr. Bernard Shaw has put the view in a perfect epigram: "The golden rule is that there is no golden rule." We are more and more to discuss details in art, politics, literature. A man's opinion on tramcars matters; his opinion on Botticelli matters; his opinion on all things does not matter. He may turn over and explore a million objects, but he must not find that strange object, the universe; for if he does he will have a religion, and be lost. Everything matters--except everything.

Quote of the Day:

"I would rather a boy learnt in the roughest school the courage to hit a politician, or gained in the hardest school the learning to refute him - rather than that he should gain in the most enlightened school the cunning to copy him." (ILN 8-31-12)

 

[rusmeister]

One of the discoveries I made was about Chesterton's relationship with George Bernard Shaw. Now most of us have at least heard of Shaw in high school, some may even have read some of his works (again, most likely via high school or college).

They were contemporaries, good friends with a high degree of respect for each other, and bitter ideological opponents. They periodically debated and were both well-known in their time. Now curiously, with the implementation of compulsory public education, Shaw got approved and included in the public programs and Chesterton did not. Or maybe it's not so surprising, when you consider what the men believed.

Shaw was an atheist who believed, for example, that marriage is domestic slavery, and that mankind can be improved through our own efforts (for much of his life he believed that education could do this - later on he came to doubt this and pinned his hopes on eugenics). He had enormous influence on John Dewey and other founders of our modern educational system. Chesterton wrote a book outlining the man from his perspective.

What I came to realize is that we live in a world where Shaw's vision has been enacted - has become official policy, the basis for what we call political correctness and much of what we see in our world today has been influenced by this Irish writer/philosopher. Furthermore, (subjective statement to follow) Chesterton was effectively censored while Shaw was actively encouraged in our schools.

We look around us, sometimes bewildered as to why the world has gone crazy - why so many people can't agree on the most basic principles of what is right and what is wrong, where has common sense gone in all of our institutions and daily life, and how we have to legislate our lives more and more to compensate, how the world is becoming more and more unrecognizable, why divorce, 'alternate life styles', violence and sex in the media spinning out of control, pedophiles living next door, registered or not, etc...

Chesterton brings us back to common sense from a Christian perspective and the fallacies that gave support to the madness become obvious.

Quote special of the day (courtesy of the American Chesterton Society):

Past Words on Today's Dilemmas

1. Absentee Fathers
   "What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible." - The Everlasting Man, CW II, p.186
2. Back To Nature
   "Properly speaking, of course, there is no such thing as a return to nature, because there is no such thing as a departure from it. The phrase reminds one of the slightly intoxicated gentleman who gets up in his own dining room and declares firmly that he must be getting home." - Chesterton Review, August, 1993
3. Bigotry
   "Bigotry is an incapacity to conceive seriously the alternative to a proposition." - Lunacy and Letters
4. Capital Punishment
   "For my part, I would have no executions except by the mob; or, at least, by the people acting quite exceptionally. I would make capital punishment impossible except by act of attainder. Then there would be some chance of a few of our real oppressors getting hanged. - ILN, 2/13/09
5. Condom Distribution
   "Our materialistic masters could, and probably will, put Birth Control into an immediate practical programme while we are all discussing the dreadful danger of somebody else putting it into a distant Utopia." - GK's Weekly, 1/17/31
6. Credibility of the Media
   "Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers." - ILN, 4/7/23
7. The Cult of Fame
   "America has a genius for the encouragement of fame." - The Father Brown Omnibus
8. The Education System
   • "The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense." - ILN, 9/7/29
   • "Though the academic authorities are actually proud of conducting everything by means of Examinations, they seldom indulge in what religious people used to descibe as Self-Examination. The consequence is that the modern State has educated its citizens in a series of ephemeral fads." - Nash's Pall Mall Magazine. April, 1935
9. Cloning
   "We are learning to do a great many clever things...The next great task will be to learn not to do them.- "Queen Victoria" Varied Types
10. A Litigious Society
    "The position we have now reached is this: starting from the State, we try to remedy the failures of all the families, all the nurseries, all the schools, all the workshops, all the secondary institutions that once had some authority of their own. Everything is ultimately brought into the Law Courts. We are trying to stop the leak at the other end." - ILN, 3/24/23
11. September 11
    "The architecture of New York chiefly consists of buildings being destroyed." - G.K.'s Weekly, 1/16/26
12. Police Authority
    "Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed." - What I Saw In America, 1922
13. Psychoanlysis
    "Psychoanalysis is a science conducted by lunatics for lunatics. They are generally concerned with proving that people are irresponsible; and they certainly succeed in proving that some people are." - ILN, 6/23/28
14. Reproductive Rights
    "Let all the babies be born. Then let us drown those we do not like." - Babies and Distributism, GK's Weekly, 11/12/32
15. Separation of Church and State
    "Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it." - Autobiography, 1937
16. Urban Planning
    "The whole structural system of the suburban civilization is based on the case for having bathrooms and the case against having babies." -G.K.'s Weekly 7-6-29
17. Vegetarianism
    "A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet." - William blake
18. Z.Z. Top
    "You cannot grow a beard in a moment of passion." - "How I Met the President" Tremendous Trifles

 

[rusmeister]

Here's a teaser for "Orthodoxy":

(advance note - Hanwell was the location of a famous lunatic asylum)

II--The Maniac


THOROUGHLY worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in himself." And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was written "Hanwell." I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has `Hanwell' written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus." And to all this my friend the publisher made this very deep and effective reply, "Well, if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?" After a long pause I replied, "I will go home and write a book in answer to that question." This is the book that I have written in answer to it.

But I think this book may well start where our argument started -- in the neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of science are much impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that necessity. They began with the fact of sin -- a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some followers of the Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.

In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now possible (with any hope of a universal appeal) to start, as our fathers did, with the fact of sin. This very fact which was to them (and is to me) as plain as a pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially diluted or denied. But though moderns deny the existence of sin, I do not think that they have yet denied the existence of a lunatic asylum. We all agree still that there is a collapse of the intellect as unmistakable as a falling house. Men deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the purpose of our primary argument the one may very well stand where the other stood. I mean that as all thoughts and theories were once judged by whether they tended to make a man lose his soul, so for our present purpose all modern thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tend to make a man lose his wits.

And a general quote:

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected." - ILN, 4/19/24

 

[rusmeister]

"The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man." - Chapter 19, What I Saw In America, 1922

From the ACS's "Nutshells":

Pride

In our self-indulgent era of self-esteem, self-fulfillment, self-assertion, and self-righteousness, we need Chesterton to remind us of just where the danger lies. In fact, he wrote that if he had just one sermon to preach, it would be a sermon against the sin of pride.
Chesterton defined pride as thinking oneself superior--as Satan thought when he fell. Chesterton believed that pride was especially dangerous because, while people fall into the other vices through weakness, pride attacks us where we are strong--even where we are good. If we are virtuous, even devoutly pious, we may not realize how proud we are of the fact, forgetting John Bradford's "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Only God is the source of His own goodness, Chesterton reminds us.
Chesterton once expressed sympathy for "a certain Cavalier whom some Puritan had denounced for the immorality of his troopers." The Cavalier's reply:

"Our men have the sins of men--wine and wenching. Yours have the sins of devils--spiritual pride and rebellion."
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And Chesterton had a ready answer for those who asked or demanded that he take "the Pledge" (i.e., a vow of total abstinence from intoxicating drink). He would swear off drinking when the temperance reformer swore to total abstinence from the sins of pride, spiritual insolence, self-praise, and the "contempt of common things." And "the wickedest work in this world is symbolized not by a wine glass but by a looking-glass."

And finally, a short essay on America:

http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/america.html