G.K. Chesterton; a biography

Today I am halfway in my 'year of reading Chesterton' and I just finished Michael Ffinch' biography. I cannot tell much about this biography, for several reasons. First, I took five months to read the book, so the first part is quite distant at the moment. The second reason is that I did not know anything about Chesterton's life before reading the biography: all my information comes from one source.
Looking through the table of contents, I see that with my chronological reading, I am not even on one third of the chapters in this book (which, I take it, roughly correspond with Chesterton's output). But at least I am beginning to get a feeling for the immense variety of Chesterton's thinking and writing.
One thing I liked about this biography was the short descriptions of Chesterton's various books: I do not only have a first idea about his life, but also about the books I want to read. And on that list of books to read I will put another biography, just to make sure I have various viewpoints.

Optimists & pessimists

Chesterton's journey to Christianity continues in chapter 5 of 'Orthodoxy' with a question about optimism and pessimism. Blindly thinking well of this world, as an optimist may do, will not change the world for the better. Neither will a pessimist make any useful changes. Chesterton realizes that one needs a passion, a love that is not blind, for the world. 'One must somehow find a way of loving the world without trusting it; somehow one must love the world without being worldly.'
Considering this, he slowly realizes that Christianity actually has the answer: God the creator is separate from His creation. Adhering to this doctrine, 'one could be at peace with the universe and yet be at war with the world'. Furthermore, the vague notions about how the world should be, as described in chapter 4, all fall into their places within the framework of Christianity.

More lessons from Elfland

Chapter four of 'Orthodoxy' relates the lessons Chesterton has known from his youth, from fairy tales. Personally, I find this a very hard chapter to grasp (or summarize), so I will rely on a lengthy quote to summarize the whole.
Before that, I will shortly relate some ideas: first, Chesterton's mention of specific and unexplained conditions (you can go to every room in the house except ...). Rules like this are not odd to Chesterton: rather they seem to belong to this magical world we live in. Second: a mere repetition of an occurrence (such as a sunrise) does not give us reasons for determinism or fatalism: they are rather expressions of an ever repeating life and joy (just as children can continue to ask 'do it again'). Chesterton finally compares this fairy-like way of viewing the world to a much more limited 'modern' worldview.
In his own words:

These are my ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine. These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt before I could think: that we may proceed more easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate them now. I felt in my bones; first, that this world does not explain itself. It may be a miracle with a supernatural explanation; it may be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it is to satisfy me, will have to be better than the natural explanations I have heard. The thing is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have someone to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of thanks to it is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us. And last, and strangest, there had come into my mind a vague and vast impression that in some way all good was a remnant to be stored and held sacred out of some primordial ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved his goods: he has saved them from a wreck. All this I felt and the age gave me no encouragement to feel it. And all this time I had not even thought of Christian theology. 

Elfland

After chapters one to three, which are somewhat introductory to the book, Chesterton really starts to develop his arguments in chapter four of 'Orthodoxy'. He starts of with extending the concept of democracy to our ancestors: the ancient traditions should not be ignored. This first part of the argument I understand and to a certain extent agree with.
After these preliminaries, Chesterton moves to his 'ethics of elfland', by 'writing down one after another the three or four fundamental ideas' which he has found for himself. He notes that 'My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. [-] The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales. They seem to me to be the entirely reasonable things. [-] Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense.'
The things Chesterton learns from fairy tales are multiple: ethical principles about pride and humility and being loveable, etc. The point he stresses most in the second quarter of chapter four is the difference between logical and natural laws. In fairy tales, just as in daily life, we encounter logical laws (two and two is four, if you are the youngest sister, you have older sisters, etc). These laws are indisputable. The other type of law, natural laws like the law of gravity, or the law that chicken come from eggs, are perhaps 'weird repetitions', but it is not a 'mental impossibility' that these laws would not apply. Though scientists imagine a necessary mental connection between natural facts, they are to Chesterton as wonderful as Cinderella's carriage turning into a pumpkin.
From fairyland, Chesterton learns a sense of wonder about the natural world around us. Next, he mentions briefly that he has a further emotion that 'life was as precious as it was puzzling'. He senses a gratitude for life itself.
He concludes this first half of chapter four: 'There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and indisputable. The world was a shock, but is was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but is was a pleasant surprise.'

Narrowness

A few days ago, I was puzzled by a reference Dale Ahlquist made about the 'narrowness' of certain philosophies. Today I read chapter 2 of 'Orthodoxy' and I understand Chesterton's argument about narrowness a little bit better.
Chesterton starts of with a question: if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe? Then he does something surprising: instead of starting at the obvious beginning of Christian apologetics, namely sin, the starts at the madhouse. The reason he gives is that some modern philosophers apparently deny sins (even then).
The point of mentioning the madhouse is that a maniac is often highly rational: he uses reason to account for the whole world (e.g. everything evolves around there being one big conspiracy). One cannot fruitfully argue with such a person, at best one can point out that his world is a very narrow one. It is consistent and complete, like a circle, but it is a very small circle.
According to Chesterton, the same goes for the materialist (and some other philosophies): they offer a rational explanation, but this materialistic universe is so small. There is no free will, there is not freedom to believe in anything more, there is no room for imagination, poetry, mysticism.
Chesterton argues that there is much more freedom in a Christian worldview, which accepts miracles, then in a materialistic worldview, which categorically rejects any possibility of miracles.
In the end, we should not be so narrowly bound by reason, if we do not want to become insane. We should mitigate reason with a measure of common sense, just as the common man always has, and accept that there may be mysteries that we cannot explain fully at the moment.
The concluding images of a circle and a cross remind me of the novel Chesterton wrote a year later: 'The ball and the cross', which illustrates similar viewpoints.

Tremendous Trifles

I just finished the last essays of Chesterton's work 'Tremendous Trifles' and I have to admit I have mixed feelings. Do not misunderstand me: most of these trifles were interesting, funny, or even brilliant ('A piece of chalk', 'On lying in bed', 'What I found in my pocket', 'The ballad of a strange town'). I found, however, that reading short articles is not my favorite mode of operation: I cannot read too many of them, for then they start to blurr, so I do not progress as quickly as I like to in the book. So all in all, I am glad to be finished.
One thing caught my attention in this book (a library book, from the 1909 edition): pages 308 and 309 were still not separated. I had to cut the paper in order to read chapter XXXVIII. One wonders that no-one in over a century apparently took the trouble to read this book to the end.

Library

To obtain Chesterton's books, I mainly rely on the local University Library. Today, I went to that small shelf, between shelves about various other persons, and found a few new books: 'The ballad of the white horse', 'The crimes of England' and 'Collected works VII', containing both 'Manalive' and 'The flying inn'. I look forward to reading something else then the 'Tremendous trifles' which have occupied me for too long. Especially since watching the first seven installments of the series about this 'apostle of common sense', I realize it might be time to read more of a variety of Chesterton's works. Moreover, at the pace I have at the moment, I will not arrive at 'The everlasting man' before the year is over. So (almost) goodbye to the trifles and even to Father Brown; I will try to make some headway in this chronological reading, even if I need to skip some books.
'Orthodoxy' cannot, of course, be skipped; I plan to read it within the next few weeks. And it may then be time for 'What is wrong with the world'.

Railway station's bookstall

Some things have not changed since Chesterton's times: railway stations are still places of waiting and the bookstalls there still sell books with relatively sensational titles. Chesterton describes browsing through some books:

my eye caught a sudden and scarlet title that for the moment staggered me. On the outside of a book I saw written in large letters, "Get On or Get Out." The title of the book recalled to me with a sudden revolt and reaction all that does seem unquestionably new and nasty; it reminded me that there was in the world of to-day that utterly idiotic thing, a worship of success; a thing that only means surpassing anybody in anything

Chesterton's catholicism

Though in my mostly chronological reading I am not even close to Chesterton's conversion to Catholicism, the television series by Dale Ahlquist introduced me to some arguments Chesterton apparently made in favor of Catholicism.
Let me start by noting that in books like 'Orthodoxy' and 'Heretics' I did not find anything particularly Catholic. This may be because I do not know enough about this Church. All in all, I was fairly surprised to hear Dale Ahlquist insist how much of the Catholic worldview was apparent in Chesterton's early works. He mentions, for example, Chesterton's stress on the family. Now I do know that Catholics make a point about families, but in my understanding Protestants too see the family as 'the cornerstone of society'.
Chesterton's two points that I understood were these: first Catholicism has an old tradition and continues the same, so that we do not have to be 'slaves' of the spirit of the times. This is a valid point against some Protestant churches, but then, the Catholic Church has also changes significantly after Vatican II (as I understand it). If I remember well, one of the epistles of the NT warns against the spirit of the age.
Chesterton's second point is about freedom: he sees the Catholic Church as broad, where Protestant Churches are too narrow for his taste. I must confess I do not understand this point; it seems to be something that can only be said from the inside, not from the outside. In one sense, though, it seems to me that narrowness is good: Jesus said we should enter through the narrow way.
Well, overall I am inspired to read yet more of Chesterton. I confess this television series wets my appetite for  more Chesterton, but the overall 'Chesterton was so Catholic and so right' perspective throws me off a little. Better the man himself than his interpreters.

Television series

I recently watched the first part of 'The apostle of common sense' by Dale Ahlquist. This television series consists of a series of lectures about Chesterton. The first was a general introduction, the second dived into Chesterton's most famous work, 'Orthodoxy', the third is about the accompanying volume 'Heretics'.
I postponed watching these series until I had read a significant amount of Chesterton: it seemed better to form my own impression before someone else told me theirs.
This said, I rather liked the first two installments of the series. The summary and explanations are simple and solid, the quotes delightful. The only thing that annoys me is the voice that is used to represent Chesterton himself: it is a rather high, sometimes shrill, voice. I do not know how Chesterton's own voice sounded, but personally I do not like this sound.
It is a minor irritation, though, in an overall interesting beginning of the series.

Blue laws

Coming from another country, the lack of what I would call 'Sunday rest' in the US was surprising. In my country, barely any shop is open on Sunday (except for the recent appearance of special 'shopping Sundays'); in this country barely any restrictions seem to apply to the Sunday as a separate day of the week. Some 'blue laws' still exist, I hear, but they do not seem not to make much difference.
Personally, I still have not made up my mind about the correct way to set apart this first day of the week. Chesterton's observations in chapter XXV of 'Tremendous Trifles' are helpful, though. He describes having to travel to give an address on a Sunday in England and his problems in getting to his destination.

Now it was very difficult to get down to it at all on Sunday afternoon, owing to the indescribable state into which our national laws and customs have fallen in connection with the seventh day. It is not Puritanism; it is simply anarchy. [-] The absurdity of the modern English convention is that is does not let a man sit still; it only perpetually trips him up when it has forced him to walk about. Our Sabbatarianism does not forbid us to ask a man in Battersea to come and talk in Hertfordshire; it only prevents his getting there. I can understand that a deity might be worshiped with joys, with flowers, and fireworks in the old European style. I can understand that a deity might be worshiped with sorrows. But I cannot imagine any deity being worshiped with inconveniences.

The barber and humanity

In Chapter XXII of 'Tremendous Trifles' Chesterton gives one simple and practical test for people who talk about 'loving humanity':

Before any modern man talks with authority about loving men, I insist (I insist with violence) that he shall always be very much pleased when his barber tries to talk to him. His barber is humanity; let him love that. If he is not pleased at this, I will not accept any substitute in the way of interest in the Congo or in the future of Japan. If a man cannot love his barber whom he has seen, how shall he love the Japanese whom he has not seen?

From Tremendous Trifles Chapter XX

It is remarkable that in so many great wars it has been the defeated who have won. The people who were left worst at the end of the war were generally the people who were left best at the end of the whole business. For instance, the Crusades ended in the defeat of the Christians. But they did not end in the decline of the Christians; they ended in the decline of the Saracens. That huge prophetic wave of Moslem power which had hung in the very heavens above the towns of Christendom, that wave was broken, and never came on again. The Crusaders had saved Paris in the act of losing Jerusalem. 

But here I only remark the interesting fact that the conquered almost always conquer. Sparta killed Athens with a final blow, and she was born again. Sparta went away victorious, and died slowly of her own wounds. The Boers lost the South African War and gained South Afrika.