The ballad of the white horse

Even though my 'official' year with Chesterton ended yesterday, I picked up this work of poetry today to get some taste of it. A few hours later I was finished and highly impressed: I have not enjoyed a work of poetry this much in at least ten years.
The poem reminded me somehow of Tolkien's Middle-Earth: a time of heraldry and courage, a time of faith, a time of battle.

The everlasting man

In these final days of this year, I decided to reread this monumental work by Chesterton. I was not disappointed: the description of paganism before Christ and the subsequent definition of Christianity against various heresies is still fascinating.

This year I read 26 books by Chesterton: not bad, but I am not halfway through his writings. Looking at the list, I do realize that my favorites are mainly Chesterton's more famous works: Orthodoxy, The man who was thursday, The everlasting man, St Francis and St Thomas. I loved his essays, though I could not read them all too fast. About traveling I only read his impressions of America, which were very interesting. I read quite some of his novels, which were unvarying in their being intriguing. The detective stories were good and entertaining. The discussions about persons (Dickens, Tolstoj, etc) sometimes depended on my knowledge of the subject.
What I missed this year falls mainly in two categories; poetry is the first. I did read Greybeards and the famous poem about the donkey, but I did not start The ballad of the white horse. The other is Chesterton's discussion about Catholicism. I had hoped to find a copy of The thing, but in the end I could not find it. I am still not completely sure about Chesterton's catholicism. It is true that protestant churches in his time were tainted by higher bible criticism and that the Catholic church presents a continuity in thinking over two thousand years, but there are more considerations then these.

At the end of this year I do find myself richer than before: Chesterton really provokes thought. I hear myself quoting Chesterton, or telling people that Chesterton thought so-and-so, or recommending people to read some works by Chesterton. A memorable author if ever there was one.

What I saw in America

I loved the first chapter of this book, where Chesterton discusses his experiences at the American consulate. Later observations are also recognizable, for example Chesterton's discussion about the difference in humor between the US and England.
The main idea from this book seems to be that it is okay to laugh about foreign things, as long as you do not assume that those things are foolish as well as foreign.

For in this matter the human mind is the victim of a curious little unconscious trick, the cause of nearly all international dislikes. A man treats his own faults as original sin and supposes them scattered everywhere with the seed of Adam. He supposes that men have then added their own foreign vices to the solid and simple foundation of his own private vices. It would astound him to realize that they have actually, by their strange erratic path, avoided his vices as well as his virtues. His own faults are things with which he is so much at home that he at once forgets and assumes them abroad. He is so faintly conscious of them in himself that he is not even conscious of the absence of them in other people. He assumes that they are there so that he does not see that they are not there. 

The American consulate

I just started 'What I saw in America', and I am still laughing at Chesterton's description of the forms he had to fill out at the American consulate to get his papers. Some things have not changed in a hundred years.

On of the questions on the paper was, 'Are you an anarchist?' To which a detached philosopher would naturally feel inclined to answer, 'What the devil has that to do with you? Are you an atheist?' along with some playful efforts to cross-examine the official about what constitutes an 'arche'. Then there was the question, 'Are you in favour of subverting the government of the United States by force?' Against this I should write, 'I prefer to answer that question at the end of my tour and not the beginning.' The inquisitor, in his more that morbid curiosity, had then written down, 'Are you a polygamist?' The answer to this is, 'No such luck' or 'Not such a fool,' according to our experience of the other sex. [-]

But among many things that  amused me almost to the point of treating the form thus disrespectfully, the most amusing was the thought of the ruthless outlaw who should feel compelled to treat it respectfully. I like to think of the foreign desperado, seeking to slip into America with official papers under official protection, and sitting down to write with a beautiful gravity, 'I am an anarchist. I hate you all and wish to destroy you.' Or 'I intend to subvert by force the government of the United States as soon as possible, sticking the long sheath-knife in my left trouser-pocket into Mr. Harding at the earliest opportunity.' Or again, 'Yes, I am a polygamist all right and my forty-seven wives are accompanying me on the voyage disguised as secretaries.' There seems to be a certain simplicity of mind about these answers; and it is reassuring to know that anarchists and polygamists are so pure and good that the police have only to ask them questions and they are certain to tell no lies. [-]

Superficially this is rather a queer business. It would be easy enough to suggest that in this America has introduced a quite abnormal spirit of inquisition; an interference with liberty unknown among all the ancient despotisms and aristocracies.

 Chesterton continues to compare this with his experiences in the Middle East:

These slaves of Asiatic autocracy were content, in the old liberal fashion, to judge me by my actions; they did not inquire into my thoughts. 

After pages and pages of hilarity, Chesterton then finally comes to a deeper analysis on why America asks these questions. His argument is quite interesting: he says that America is the only nation in the world that is 'founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.'

The crimes of England

This has been the sole book by Chesterton which seemed to be outdated. This may be merely my perception, because of a lack of knowledge of nineteenth-century English history. Still, there were some interesting ideas in this book, written in 'The Great War'.

Pan-Germanism

Chesterton allegorizes the nature of Pan-Germanism as follows:

The horse asserts that all other creatures are morally bound to sacrifice their interests to his, on the specific ground that he possesses all noble and necessary qualities, and is an end in himself. It is pointed out in an answer that when climbing a tree the horse is less graceful than the cat; that lovers and poets seldom urge the horse to make a noise all night like the nightingale; that when submerged for some time under water, he is less happy than the haddock; and that when he is cut open pearls are less often found in him than in an oyster.  He is not content to answer (though, being a muddle-headed horse, he does use this answer also) that having an undivided hoof is more than pearls or oceans or all ascension of song. He reflects for a few years on the subject of cats;  and at last discovers in the cat "the characteristic equine equality of caudality, or a tail"; so that cats are horses, and wave on every tree-top the tale which is the equine banner. Nightingales are found to have legs, which explains their power of song. Haddocks are vertebrates; and therefore are sea-horses. And though the oyster outwardly presents dissimilarities which seem to divide him from the horse, he is by the all-filling nature-might of the same horse-moving energy sustained.

Now this horse is intellectually the wrong horse. It is not perhaps going too far to say that this horse is a donkey. For it is obviously within even the intellectual resources of a haddock to answer to answer, "But if a haddock is a horse, why should I yield to you any more than you to me? Why should that singing horse commonly called the nightingale, or that climbing horse hitherto known as the cat, fall down and worship you because of your horsehood? If all our native faculties are the accomplishments of a horse - why then are you only another horse without any accomplishments." When thus gently reasoned with, the horse flings up his heels, kicks the cat, crushes the oyster, eats the haddock and pursues the nightingale, and that is how the war began.

And Chesterton concludes: "if Teutonism is used for comprehension it cannot be used for conquest."
From 'The crimes of England', Chapter VIII

 

Germany and England

Chesterton's book 'The crimes of England' seems to principally deal with the relation between England and Germany (which is not surprising, as the book was written in the 'Great War'). The book is difficult to follow for someone like me, whose English and German history of ages prior to 1900 is quite shaky.
An interesting point that recurs every now and then is a certain perception of German thought. In chapter VI, for example, Chesterton names the one 'classic and perfect literary product that ever came out of Germany'; he means 'Grimm's Fairy Tales'. He compares this with later German writings:

I am all for German fantasy, but I will resist German earnestness till I die. I am all for Grimm's Fairy Tales; but if there is such a thing as Grimm's Law, I would break it, if I knew what it was. [-]

The Germans cannot really be deep because they will not consent to be superficial. They are bewitched by art, and stare at it, and cannot see round it. They will not believe that art is a light and slight thing - a feather, even if it be from an angelic wing. 

Eugenics and other evils

This was a very interesting book to read, especially since it was written almost a century ago (in the time before WOII, when one could still openly be a eugenist). Chesterton spends quite some time explaining how eugenics is related to both capitalism and socialism; I was reminded of his analyses in the end of 'What's wrong with the world'.

Eugenics, socialism and capitalism

In part II of 'Eugenics and other evils', Chesterton analyzes the reasons for the move towards Eugenics in his time. Socialism, and the desire that the government control the health of its subjects, is one influence. Capitalism, though, is also guilty: "That this is so, that at root the Eugenist is the Employer, there are multitudinous proofs on every side, but they are of necessity miscellaneous, and in many cases negative. The most enormous is in a sense the most negative: that no one seems able to imagine capitalist industrialism being sacrificed to any other object.' Similar to other arguments in other books, Chesterton shows how we tend to forget what should be our primary focus (such as normal people and families) and treat modern and fleeting institutions as permanent. Chesterton uses one example to make his point clear (from chapter V):

To this [a specific paper] a man writes to say that the spread of destitution will never be stopped until we have educated the lower classes in the methods by which the upper classes prevent procreation. The man had the horrible playfulness to sign his letter "Hopeful". [-] The curious point is that the hopeful one concludes by saying, "When people have large families and small wages, not only is there a high infantile death-rate, but often those who do live to grow up are stunted and weakened by having had to share the family income for a time with those who died early. There would be less unhappiness if there were no unwanted children." You will observe that he tacitly takes it for granted that the small wages and the income, desperately shared,are the fixed points, like day and night, the conditions of human life. Compared with them marriage and maternity are luxuries, things to be modified to suit the wage-market. There are unwanted children; but unwanted by whom? This man does not really mean that the parents doe not want to have them. He means that the employers do not want to pay them properly.

Reading this, I think of the character of 'tiny Tim', from Dickens' 'Christmas Carol'...

Science

From 'Eugenics and other evils', chapter VII:

The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that is really levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statutes, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen - that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the Government will really help it to persecute its heretics. Vaccination, in its hundred years of experiment, has been disputed almost as much as baptism in its approximate two thousand. But is seems quite natural to our politicians to enforce vaccinations; and it would seem to them madness to enforce baptism. 

I am not frightened of the word "persecution" when it is attributed to the churches; nor is it in the least as a term of reproach that I attribute it to the men of science. It is as a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof - then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are.

 I have to say that I do not agree with Chesterton completely; I do tend to trust specialists, and I do not necessarily believe the common man with his common sense will have the right view of scientific theories. But it is good to realize that the scientific worldview (even in a specific area) is not as immovable as some popular writers tend to express.

 

Euphemistic Eugenists

Before Chesterton tackles Eugenics itself in 'Eugenics and other evils', he spends a few sections discussing superficial proponents of the theory. Foremost are the 'euphemists': 'short words startle them, while long words soothe them. And they are utterly incapable of translating the one into the other, however obviously they mean the same thing'.
In Orthodoxy, years before, Chesterton already remarked: "It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable."  

Pre-emptive action

The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists. It is no answer to say, with a distant optimism, that the scheme is only in the air. A blow from a hatchet can only be parried while it is in the air.

This is how Chesterton begins his work on Eugenics in 1922. No comments needed.

St Thomas Aquinas

Chestertons's book about the 'dumb ox' or the 'angelic doctor' is very interesting: it does not pretend to be more than an introduction (or a 'plan'), but in these 250 pages there is enough information to have quite some idea about Thomas' life, his character, his philosophy and his impact. Chesterton heralds him as the defender of 'common sense' (a title later applied to himself); he insists that Thomas' philosophy was the perfect middle that corresponds to what the common man thinks (even though the syllogisms are quite technical). Affirming the world as being created good (opposed to the overly platonistic thinkers), but letting it find its final goal in God. Affirming the importance of Aristotle's philosophy, but rather by 'baptizing Aristotle' than by compromising Christianity.

The character

After a chapter on the Aristotelian revolution and a chapter on Thomas' thought about the Manichees, Chesterton suddenly inserts a chapter on St. Thomas' character. In some ways this chapter V is a continuation of chapter II, when we were told how St. Thomas became a Dominican. Why then the two other chapters inbetween, I wondered.
I think that the answer is that we will appreciate Thomas' character more after we know a little bit about his thinking. His absent-mindedness is more understandable, his humility more amazing, his faith more touching.

Finding common ground

At the end of chapter III of his book about St. Thomas Aquinas, Chesterton takes one Thomist sentence and tries to convey its importance for modern apologetics. His argument reminds me somewhat of a book that I once read: 'Finding common ground'. The general point: when talking with people of other convictions, one has to speak the same language. Or, in Chesterton's words:

If there is one phrase that stands before history as typical of Thomas Aquinas, it is that phrase about his own argument: "It is not based on documents of faith, but on the reasons and statements of the philosophers themselves." Would that all Orthodox doctors in deliberation were as reasonable as Aquinas in anger! Would that all Christian apologists would remember that maxim; and write it up in large letters on the wall, before they nail any theses there. At the top of his fury, Thomas Aquinas understands, what so many defenders of orthodoxy will not understand. It is no good to tell an atheist that he is an atheist; or to charge a denier of immortality with the infamy of denying it; or to imagine that one can force an opponent to admit he is wrong, by proving that he is wrong on somebody else's principles, but not on his own. After the great example of St. Thomas, the principle stands, or ought always to have stood established; that we must either not argue with a man at all, or we must argue on his grounds and not ours. 

Revolution

Both in his books on St. Francis of Assisi and on St. Thomas Aquinas, Chesterton frequently spends quite some pages explaining some Medieval ideas to his contemporaries. I loved this analysis about rebellion and revolution in chapter III of his book on St. Thomas:

Perhaps there is really no such thing as a Revolution recorded in history. What happened was always a Counter-Revolution. Men were always rebelling against the last rebels; or even repenting of the last rebellion. This could be seen in the most casual contemporary fashion, if the fashionable mind had not fallen into the habit of seeing the very latest rebel as rebelling against all ages at once. The Modern Girl with the lipstick and the cocktail is as much a rebel against the Woman's Rights Woman of the '80's, with her stiff stick-up collars and strict teetotalism, as the latter was a rebel against the Early Victorian lady of the languid waltz tunes and the album full of quotations from Byron; or as the last, again, was a rebel against a Puritan mother to whom the waltz was a wild orgy and Byron the Bolshevist of his age. Trace even the Puritan mother back through history and she represents the rebellion against the Cavalier laxity of the English Church, which was at first a rebel against the Catholic civilisation, which had been a rebel against the Pagan civilisation. 

Nobody but a lunatic could pretend that these things were a progress; for they obviously go first one way and then the other. But whichever is right, one thing is certainly wrong; and that is the modern habit of looking at them only from the modern end. For that is only to see the end of the tale; they rebel against they know not what, because it arose they know not when; intent only on its ending, they are ignorant of its beginning; and therefore of its very being. 

In some ways it reminds me of Hegel, but better :).

St. Francis of Assisi

Chesterton did not so much write a biography of, but more of an introduction to St. Francis of Assisi. The book is specifically written for the modern reader, who may have a distorted view of this medieval saint. Miracles, for example, are only discussed towards the end of the book; before that we read about the character of the man.
From the hundreds of stories about St. Francis' life, Chesterton only chooses a few. With these stories, he illustrates the character of the founder of the Franciscan Order. Chesterton also spends quite some time explaining the difference in times between now (or rather, Chesterton's time, around 1923) and the thirteenth century.
The purpose of the book is to interest people to read more of St. Francis, and I have to admit that Chesterton does succeed in this object.

Gutenberg

A few weeks ago, I finally decided to buy a Kindle. I had hesitated for years about e-books, but the time seems to have come. And after some reading, I have to say that I do not regret the decision: the Kindle reads well and it appears that there are quite some classic works available over the internet. For example: I could not find Chesterton's book on St. Francis in the local library, but now I read it on the Kindle.
The website that I found most impressive was gutenberg.org: a list of hundreds of classical authors, with numerous of their books. There are 49 books by Chesterton on this site (BTW: listed on popularity, Chesterton is number 33 on the list). There is much more to read...

The running Saint

Chesterton's little book about St. Francis of Assisi proves to be fascinating. I was especially impressed by the picture we get of St. Francis' rashness and impetuousness. Not characteristics I expected in a Saint, but very fitting for the founder of the Franciscan order.
Even as a young man St. Francis ran through the streets after a beggar to give him some money. Then he did something characteristic: "[He] swore before God that he would never all his life refuse to help a poor man. The sweeping simplicity of this undertaking is extremely characteristic. Never was any man so little afraid of his own promises. His life was one riot of rash vows; of rash vows that turned out right.".
St. Francis wanted to be a French poet (troubadour), or a soldier. But after "his vision of dependence on the divine love, he flung himself into fasting and vigil exactly as he had flung himself furiously into battle. Het had wheeled his charger clean round, but there was no halt or check in the thundering impetuosity of his charge.".

Context

Chesterton's work on St. Francis of Assisi starts with some good introductory remarks. I was especially impressed by chapter 2. Chesterton starts by explaining why the context of St. Francis' life is important. Then he provides a wonderful view of the early Middle Ages (the 'dark ages') as a time when nature had to be 'purged' from paganism.
Paganism started very 'natural' by worshiping nature, but this had become a very unnatural thing over the centuries. 'Pagans were wiser than paganism; that is why pagans became Christians.'. These early Christians, however, still had tainted views of nature: everything still had references to the old idolatry. So in the dark ages, Christians detached themselves from nature. Just before the time of St. Francis (and St. Thomas), people began to realize that nature was pure. They could again see nature as a creation by God. This new-found innocence provides part of the context of St. Francis' live.