G. K. Chesterton - "Prince of Paradox"
When I lived in a monastery for two years, we had to study all the Catholic writers. My literature teacher, Brother Marcellin, was a devotee of Chesterton and, through him, I also grew to love Chesterton who is known among Catholics as the "Prince of Paradox."
Chesterton (1874- 1936) is probably most famous for his "Father Brown" mystery stories but he actually wrote a lot of other stuff: 80 books, hundreds of poems, 200 short stories, 4,000 essays and several plays as well as the "Father Brown" mysteries which were written as short stories.
In 1954 a film (released in the USA as "The Detective") starred Alec Guinness as Father Brown. (Supposedly the experience of playing the character of Father Brown inspired Guinness's conversion to Catholicism.) In 1974 the BBC made a TV series of the Father Brown stories.
I think my main attraction to Chesterton was that he, like me, was also a convert to Catholicism. He became a Catholic in 1922 when he was already 48 but he had been a devout Christian long before he joined the Catholic church and Christian themes occur in most of his writings. Chesterton's book, "The Everlasting Man," prompted C. S. Lewis's conversion to Christianity.
Chesterton converted to Catholicism because of his close friendship with the poet and essayist, Hilaire Belloc. Belloc and Chesterton were accused of being anti-Semitic. Chesterton admitted that he believed that there was a "Jewish Problem" in Europe; that the Jews kept themselves seperate from the European nations in which they lived. He suggested the formation of a Jewish homeland as a solution, and was later invited to Palestine by the Zionists who saw him as an ally in their dream to create Israel.
In 1934, after the Nazi party took power in Germany he wrote: "In our early days Hilaire Belloc and myself were accused of being uncompromising Anti-Semites. Today, although I still think there is a Jewish problem, I am appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities. They have absolutely no reason or logic behind them. It is quite obviously the expedient of a man who has been driven to seeking a scapegoat, and has found with relief the most famous scapegoat in European history, the Jewish people."
Chesterton knew all the famous writers of his time. Most of them like H.G. Wells and G.B. Shaw were socialists and, while he was friendly with them, he did not hesitate to criticize their politics and philosophies.
He said of his fellow convert to Catholicism, Oscar Wilde: "The lesson of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw."
He said of the socialist vegetarian playwright, George Bernard Shaw: "After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby."
He said of the idiotic idealists, Tolstoy and Nietzsche: "The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless — one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan’s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite’s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is — well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads...."
Here are a few of my favorite Chesterton quotes:
"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."
"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice."
"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."
"The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are."
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."
"Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it."
"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid."
"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog."
"The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right."
I could go on forever but I won't. That was just to show you why he was known as the "Prince of Paradox."
Chesterton (1874- 1936) is probably most famous for his "Father Brown" mystery stories but he actually wrote a lot of other stuff: 80 books, hundreds of poems, 200 short stories, 4,000 essays and several plays as well as the "Father Brown" mysteries which were written as short stories.
In 1954 a film (released in the USA as "The Detective") starred Alec Guinness as Father Brown. (Supposedly the experience of playing the character of Father Brown inspired Guinness's conversion to Catholicism.) In 1974 the BBC made a TV series of the Father Brown stories.
I think my main attraction to Chesterton was that he, like me, was also a convert to Catholicism. He became a Catholic in 1922 when he was already 48 but he had been a devout Christian long before he joined the Catholic church and Christian themes occur in most of his writings. Chesterton's book, "The Everlasting Man," prompted C. S. Lewis's conversion to Christianity.
Chesterton converted to Catholicism because of his close friendship with the poet and essayist, Hilaire Belloc. Belloc and Chesterton were accused of being anti-Semitic. Chesterton admitted that he believed that there was a "Jewish Problem" in Europe; that the Jews kept themselves seperate from the European nations in which they lived. He suggested the formation of a Jewish homeland as a solution, and was later invited to Palestine by the Zionists who saw him as an ally in their dream to create Israel.
In 1934, after the Nazi party took power in Germany he wrote: "In our early days Hilaire Belloc and myself were accused of being uncompromising Anti-Semites. Today, although I still think there is a Jewish problem, I am appalled by the Hitlerite atrocities. They have absolutely no reason or logic behind them. It is quite obviously the expedient of a man who has been driven to seeking a scapegoat, and has found with relief the most famous scapegoat in European history, the Jewish people."
Chesterton knew all the famous writers of his time. Most of them like H.G. Wells and G.B. Shaw were socialists and, while he was friendly with them, he did not hesitate to criticize their politics and philosophies.
He said of his fellow convert to Catholicism, Oscar Wilde: "The lesson of the pessimistic pleasure-seeker was taught by the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion; but the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw."
He said of the socialist vegetarian playwright, George Bernard Shaw: "After belabouring a great many people for a great many years for being unprogressive, Mr. Shaw has discovered, with characteristic sense, that it is very doubtful whether any existing human being with two legs can be progressive at all. Having come to doubt whether humanity can be combined with progress, most people, easily pleased, would have elected to abandon progress and remain with humanity. Mr. Shaw, not being easily pleased, decides to throw over humanity with all its limitations and go in for progress for its own sake. If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man. It is rather as if a nurse had tried a rather bitter food for some years on a baby, and on discovering that it was not suitable, should not throw away the food and ask for a new food, but throw the baby out of window, and ask for a new baby."
He said of the idiotic idealists, Tolstoy and Nietzsche: "The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless — one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan’s will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite’s will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the crossroads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is — well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads...."
Here are a few of my favorite Chesterton quotes:
"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."
"The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice."
"A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."
"The person who is really in revolt is the optimist, who generally lives and dies in a desperate and suicidal effort to persuade other people how good they are."
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."
"Among the rich you will never find a really generous man even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egotistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it."
"I believe what really happens in history is this: the old man is always wrong; and the young people are always wrong about what is wrong with him. The practical form it takes is this: that, while the old man may stand by some stupid custom, the young man always attacks it with some theory that turns out to be equally stupid."
"The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog."
"The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right."
I could go on forever but I won't. That was just to show you why he was known as the "Prince of Paradox."
posted by Joubert at 10:25 PM
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