Repost: G.K. Chesterton – The Evolution of Emma

[502] Among the many good critical tributes to the genius of Jane Austen, to the fine distinction of her humor, the sympathetic intimacy of her satire, the easy exactitude of her unpretentious style, which have appeared in celebration of her centenary, there is one criticism that is naturally recurrent; the remark that she was quite untouched by the towering politics of her time. This is intrinsically true; nevertheless it may easily be used to imply the reverse of the truth. It is true that Jane Austen did not attempt to teach any history or politics; but it is not true that we cannot learn any history or politics from Jane Austen. Any work so piercingly intelligent of its own kind, and especially any work of so wise and humane a kind, is sure to tell us much more than shallower studies covering a larger surface. I will not say much of the mere formality of some of the conventions and conversational forms; for in such things it is not only not certain that change is important, but it is not even certain that it is final. The view that a thing is old-fashioned is itself a fashion; and may soon be an old fashion. We have seen this in many recurrences of female dress; but it has a deeper basis in human nature. The truth is that a phrase can be falsified by use without being false in fact; it can seem stale without being really stilted. Those who see a word as merely worn out, fail to look forward as well as back. I know of two poems by two Irish poets of two different centuries, essentially on the same theme; the lover declaring that his love will outlast the mere popularity of the beauty. One is by Mr. Yeats and begins: "Though you are in [503] your shining days." The other is by Tom Moore and begins: "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms." The latter language strikes us as ridiculously florid and over-ripe; but Moore was far from being ridiculous. Believe me (as he would say) it was no poetaster who wrote those hackneyed words about the silent harp and the heart that breaks for liberty. And if English were read some day by strangers as a classic language, I am not sure that "endearing" would not endure as a better word than "shining"; or even that (after some repetition and reaction) it might not seem as strained to say "shining" as to say "shiny." Yet Mr. Yeats also is a great poet. Similarly, when one of Jane Austen's heroines wants to say that the hero is a good fellow, she expresses confidence in what she calls "his worth." This goads her younger modern readers to madness; yet in truth the term is far more philosophic and eternal than the terms they would use themselves. They would probably say he was "nice," and Jane Austen would indeed be avenged. For the best of her heroes, Henry Tilney, himself foresaw and fulminated against the unmeaning ubiquity of that word, a prophet of the pure reason of his age, seeing in a vision of the future the fall of the human mind.

Negatively, of course, the historic lesson from Jane Austen is enormous. She is perhaps most typical of her time in being supremely irreligious. Her very virtues glitter with the cold sunlight of the great secular epoch between mediaeval and modern mysticism. In that small masterpiece, "Northanger Abbey," her unconsciousness of history is itself a piece of history. For Catherine Morland was right, as young and romantic people often are. A real crime had been committed in Northanger Abbey. It is implied in the very name of Northanger Abbey. It was the crucial crime of the sixteenth century, when all the institutions of the poor were savagely seized to be the private possessions of the rich. It is strange that the name remains; it is stranger still that it remains unrealized. We should think it odd to go to tea at a man's house and find it was still called a church. We should be surprised if a gentleman's shooting box at Claybury were referred to as Claybury Cathedral. But the irony of the eighteenth century is that Catherine was healthily interested in crimes and yet never found the real crime; and that she never really thought of it as an abbey, even when she thought of it most as an antiquity.

But there is a positive as well as a negative way in which her greatness, like Shakespeare's, illuminates history and politics, because it illuminates everything. She understood every intricacy of the upper middle class and the minor gentry, which were to make so much of the mental life of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is said that she ignored the poor and disregarded their opinions. She did, but not more than all our Governments and all our Acts of Parliaments have done. And at least she did consistently ignore them; she ignored where she was ignorant. Well it would have been for the world if others had ignored the working-class until they understood it as well as she did the middle class. She was not a student of sociology; she did not study the poor. But she did study the students—or at least the social types which were to become the students of the poor. She knew her own class, and knew it without illusions; and there is much light on later problems to be found in her delicate delineation of vanities and snobberies and patronage. She had to do with the human heart; and it is that which cometh out of the heart that defileth a nation, philanthropy, [504] efficiency, organization, social reform. And if the weaker brethren still wonder why we should find in Baby Week or Welfare Work a dangerous spirit, from which its best adherents find it hard to free themselves, if they doubt how such a danger can be reconciled with the personal delicacy and idealism of many of the women who work such things, if they think that fine words or even fine feelings will guarantee a respect for the personality of the poor, I really do not know that they could do better than sit down, I trust not for the first time, to the reading of "Emma."

For all this that has happened since might well be called the Evolution of Emma. That unique and formidable institution, the English Lady, has, indeed, become much more of a public institution; that is, she has made the same mistakes on a much larger scale. The softer fastidiousness and finer pride of the more gracious eighteenth century heroine may seem to make her a shadow by comparison. It seems cruel to say that the breaking off of Harriet's humbler engagement foreshadows the indiscriminate development of Divorce for the Poor. It seems horrible to say that Emma's small matchmaking has in it the seed of the pestilence of Eugenics. But it is true. With a gentleness and justice and sympathy with good intentions, which clear her from the charge of common cynicism, the great novelist does find the spring of her heroine's errors, and of many of ours. That spring is a philanthropy, and even a generosity, secretly founded on gentility. Emma Woodhouse was a wit, she was a good woman, she was an individual with a right to her own opinion; but it was because she was a lady that she acted as she did, and thought she had a right to act as she did. She is the type in fiction of a whole race of English ladies, in fact, for whom refinement is religion. Her claim to oversee and order the social things about her consisted in being refined; she would not have admitted that being rich had anything to do with it; but as a fact it had everything to do with it. If she had been very much richer, if she had had one of the great modern fortunes, if she had had the wider modern opportunities (for the rich) she would have thought it her duty to act on the wider modern scale; she would have had public spirit and political grasp. She would have dealt with a thousand Robert Martins and a thousand Harriet Smiths, and made the same muddle about all of them. That is what we mean about things like Baby Week—and if there had been a baby in the story, Miss Woodhouse would certainly have seen all its educational needs with a brilliant clearness. And we do not mean that the work is done entirely by Mrs. Pardiggle; we mean that much of it is done by Miss Woodhouse. But it is done because she is Miss Woodhouse and not Martha Muggins or Jemima Jones; because the Lady Bountiful is a lady first, and will bestow every bounty but freedom.

It is noted that there are few traces of the French Revolution in Miss Austen's novels; but, indeed, there have been few traces of it in Miss Austen's country. The peculiarity which has produced the situation I describe is really this: that the new sentiment of humanitarianism has come, when the old sentiment of aristocracy has not gone. Social superiors have not really lost any old privileges; they have gained new privileges, including that of being superior in philosophy and philanthropy as well as in riches and refinement. No revolution has shaken their secret security or menaced them with the awful peril of becoming no more than men. Therefore their social reform is but their social refinement [505] grown restless. And in this old tea cup comedy can be found, far more clearly appreciated than in more ambitious books about problems and politics, the psychology of this mere restlessness in the rich, when it first stirred upon its cushions. Jane Austen described a narrow class, but so truthfully that she has much to teach about its after adventures, when it remained narrow as a class and broadened only as a sect.

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Source: G.K. Chesterton, "The Evolution of Emma," The Living Age 194 (August 1917): 502–505.

Alfred the Great and Tradition: Reflections on G.K. Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse

[Originally written for a class.]

G.K. Chesterton’s The Ballad of the White Horse is a beautiful and electrifying epic poem, steeped in English culture and proving its merit by how it captures the past to invigorate the present and the future. The poem was met with wide acclaim when it was first published, even being read by English soldiers during World War I.[1] Interestingly, J.R.R. Tolkien had quite a critical view of the poem, “[It] is not as good as I thought. The ending is absurd. […] G.K.C. knew nothing whatever about the ‘North’, heathen or Christian.”[2] Nevertheless, I very much like the poem, and my favorite character is certainly King Alfred, for he is the personification of the best of tradition. My interest in Alfred stems from my love of traditionalism and all of its societal implications. First, I will define tradition as it is relevant here and its relation to kingly character. Then I will discuss how Alfred personifies tradition by contrasting him with the barbarian and Christian chiefs, comparing him to two other notable symbols of tradition in the poem, namely, the White Horse and the playing child, and finally showing how his particular faults and virtues illustrate the development of tradition.

Chesterton was an eminent and excellent defender of tradition, memorably defining it as “the democracy of the dead” in his essay “The Ethics of Elfland.”[3] In the prefatory note to the Ballad, Chesterton points out the function of tradition: “It telescopes history.”[4] In a separate essay on King Alfred, Chesterton expands on this telescopic function, writing, “Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men. […] We are in the presence of a thousand lies all pointing with their fantastic fingers to one undiscovered truth.”[5] Tradition presents us with the most noble, the best of human history. Living tradition is also necessarily popular. Chesterton chose to include certain episodes of Alfred’s life based simply on the fact that “it is a popular tale” as he says in the prefatory note. These tales reveal something of Alfred but, deeper than that, something valuable for English culture to preserve. Tradition connects us to the past in order to strengthen us in the present and prepare us for the future. We can call it “trans-historical” because while it derives from concrete history, it is not a mere restatement of dry facts but a distillation of the themes of human virtue and supernatural grace at war against selfishness and the forces of evil. Anthropologists even define tradition along the same lines:

Over the course of centuries, the actions of ancestral heroes, imitated directly and then represented in myth, become transformed, simplified, streamlined and quickened [….] Culture is therefore the “sum total” of surviving historically-determined, hierarchically-arranged behaviors […] into a single pattern of behavior—into a single system of morality [….][6]

Finally, in Western culture the figures of the father and the king have frequently embodied tradition: “‘Culture’ binds ‘nature.’ […] The protective capacity of benevolent tradition, embodied in the form of political order, constitutes a common mythological/narrative theme.”[7] We already see hinted here the profound link between Alfred and the continued existence of the White Horse, “cultivated” in the hillside of “nature” by human agency over time. Chesterton does not hesitate to paint Alfred in this archetypal manner; even the title of “the Great” brings into sharper relief the formative impact that the legends of Alfred brought to English society: “Every nation requires to have behind it some historic personality, the validity of which is proved, as the validity of a gun is proved, by its long range.”[8]

It is Alfred’s personification of tradition and the content of that tradition that make him worthy of the title “the Great.” However, in order to illuminate more clearly this relationship between Alfred and his greatness, it will be useful to contrast Alfred with the barbarian and Christian chiefs in the Ballad. The Danish chiefs represent vices antithetical to tradition. Harold represents lust and gluttony, in short, hedonism and materialism: “But we, but we shall enjoy the world, / The whole huge world a toy. / Great wine like blood from Burgundy / […] And the great smooth women like ivory / That the Turks sell in the street.”[9] Elf represents pride and curiosity[10] of the sort that end in disillusionment: “There is always a forgotten thing, / And love is not secure.”[11] I note disillusionment, for the poem relates how those who listen to Elf’s music grow sad. Later in the poem, the reader learns that Elf acquired a magical spear after encountering water-maids, further revealing Elf’s curiosity into the occult and demonic (note even Elf’s own name, which suggests the mythical and forbidden, the gnostic). Ogier, like an ogre, represents wrath: “Well if [a man] find in his soul at last / Fury, that does not fail. […] And hate alone is true.”[12] Finally, Guthrum represents despair and nihilism: “And a man may still lift up his head / But never more his heart.”[13] These virtues are antithetical to tradition. Lust and gluttony consume a person with himself, but tradition and culture draw a man out of himself to consider the common and higher good. Elf’s curiosity is the seeking of the novel and strange, the “forgotten thing,” but tradition cultivates and preserves the good proper to a community, establishing barriers to prevent possibly damaging foreign intrusion. Wrath and hatred prevent any sense of tradition from developing, for whereas today we often hear in the news of growing mob mentalities and the deepening divisions of identity politics, tradition on the other hand draws men together in common bonds of mutual concern and respect. Finally, despair and nihilism overturn the very foundation of tradition, which is the firm faith in the true, good, and beautiful.

The Christian chiefs represent foils of the barbarians, each chief focusing on some quality necessary for the promotion and preservation of tradition. Colan contrasts with Harold by representing purity and asceticism, which shift a man’s focus away from himself and refuse to see others merely in terms of his own gain or pleasure: “For Colan was hung with raiment / Tattered like autumn leaves, / And his men were all as thin as saints, / And all as poor as thieves.”[14] Mark represents humility, orderliness, and studiousness: “But Mark was come […] / Where men can number and expound, And his faith grew in a hard ground / Of doubt and reason and falsehood found, / Where no faith else could grow.”[15] As the narrator tells us, Mark’s environment so valued the truth that falsehood could not take root there, for example, the falsehood of heresy and pagan mysticism. Hence Mark later defeats Elf in battle: “But the shield [of Mark] shifted never,” that is, Mark’s humble commitment to the true was not swayed by Elf’s curious knowledge of the “forgotten things.” Eldred symbolizes humility and meekness. He is “down to earth” and focused on the concrete realities of life: “I will watch the certain things.”[16] In the midst of battle, Eldred’s heart is focused on his crops as he thanks God “for good eating / And corn and quiet times,”[17] and this focus and gratitude are the foundation of culture, the cultivation of the earth leading to the worship of God, offering Him the first-fruits. However, this simplicity, left on its own, is susceptible to manipulation, which is how Elf with his cleverness, symbolized by the enchanted spear, kills Eldred. Finally, Alfred represents hope. Although defeated, he keeps his conviction in the triumph of good over evil: “But our king Alfred, lost from fame, / […] Has still some song to sing.”[18] When combined these virtues form the bedrock of a healthy culture: mortification, consideration for others, a commitment to the truth that never becomes arrogant, and finally, to hope in the good and the true “against hope” as Saint Paul says.[19]

Only when the Christian chiefs are united can they defeat the barbarians; as individuals they fall. Alfred unites the Christian chiefs precisely for their different strengths. Similarly, tradition binds men across their individual differences and skills, tempering and directing them for the sake of the good beyond each individual. Tradition orients a man by placing him between the past and the future, and Alfred does exactly the same by seeking out his allies and organizing them to defeat the threat of the Danes, to keep the White Horse, and to preserve Christendom.

In order to draw out further how Alfred personifies tradition, I would like to focus also on two other symbols of tradition in the Ballad, namely, the White Horse itself and the child at play during the battle. The White Horse is the artifact of tradition where Alfred represents the agent who preserves tradition. The White Horse exists only because of the intention and dedication of men across time to preserve its existence. In other words, tradition is maintained to the precise degree that those who possess tradition choose to hand it on for future generations. The processes of degeneration, decay, and forgetfulness are constantly repeated throughout the Ballad: “The great White Horse was grey [sic], / […] Since the foes of settled house and creed / Had swept old works away.”[20] Alfred states frankly, “I know that weeds shall grow in it / Faster than men can burn.”[21] Hence the determination and commitment to preserve tradition must be equally insistent, patient, and renewed. The hope of Alfred is represented in the continued scouring of the White Horse; thus the Horse is an abiding sign of hope even to the extent that it is called “a live thing, / The scoured chalk.”[22] This is the hope that Our Lady speaks of to Alfred, the hope that God will triumph in the end despite every external indication to the contrary while journeying in the world. This hope of heaven is even called “a doubtful star / On the waste wind whirled and driven,”[23] reinforcing its seemingly elusive, intangible quality. The manner in which Colan defeats Harold illustrates the paradox of this hope: “Man shall not taste of victory / Till he throws his sword away,”[24] that is, precisely when one is in the condition of complete helplessness and humility can one be redeemed, modeled by Christ’s death on the cross. This hope is so efficaciously transformative that by it “men signed of the cross of Christ / Go gaily in the dark.”[25] Here we see a striking collision or coordination between circumstances that seem utterly beyond one’s control and the Christian’s free abandonment to Providence, which is sometimes so obscure to human vision that to persevere requires “joy without a cause, / Yea, faith without a hope.”[26]

Chesterton opens Book VII with a surprising divergence from the battle scene by focusing on a child playing in the grass and building a tower out of stones. In the poem, the child clearly represents Christ: “The child played on, alone, divine [….] The child whom Time can never tire.”[27] The child’s building of the tower represents both the plan of redemption and God’s invitation of salvation to men, repeatedly offered throughout history, as well as the building up of the Kingdom of God on earth, which is a necessary corollary of the spreading of the Church as individuals cooperate with that divine plan. The child has infinite patience, infinite determination, infinite hope. The child also represents Alfred as the poem explicitly states: “And this was the might of Alfred, / At the ending of the way [….] Alfred fought as gravely / As a good child at play.”[28] Because of Alfred’s complete surrender to this hope beyond hope, the poem notes that whereas the other chiefs will be forgotten, Alfred will not and hence “rules England till the doom”[29] in the figures of the White Horse and English culture. The act of building the tower is another representation of the scouring of the White Horse and therefore of the act of handing on tradition, the cultivation and raising of civilization from the chaos of untamed nature. Time can never tire the child or Alfred because of his hope; the White Horse is preserved “though skies alter and empires melt.”[30]

Lastly, an examination of Alfred’s other faults and virtues will reveal how Alfred signifies tradition. Before the battle against the Danes begins, Alfred confesses grievous sins he committed in the past, an act of humiliation reminiscent of the “nobis quoque” in the Canon at Mass. This act has a twofold significance: 1) it is a remembrance of the past in its mistakes and failures; and 2) it is a resolution to amend one’s life. By growing in self-knowledge and humility, man equips himself in the struggle to grow in virtue, and on the societal level the knowledge of one’s own history helps prevent repeating the mistakes of the past. By immortalizing Alfred’s contrition, Chesterton conveys the important notion of tradition as a light to know our fallen nature (remembrance of past sins) and to guide our future behavior (amendment of life).[31]

Alfred’s idealism is both a virtue and a fault. Originally, his idealism lacked humility: after his initial defeat by the Danes, Alfred despaired: “And naught was left King Alfred / But shameful tears of rage, / [….] He was broken to his knee.”[32] Later when Alfred is tending the fire in the peasant woman’s hut, his arrogant idealism causes him to pity the woman’s poverty and wax eloquently in his mind on lofty theological ideas of Providence. His failure to do a simple task, and the humility that follows, temper his idealism by rooting him in the concrete present: “Pride flings frail palaces at the sky, / […] But the firm feet of humility / They grip the ground like trees.”[33] All of Alfred’s daydreaming not only brought about no good but led to waste. This episode illustrates that hope must not make us ignore the realities of the present and fail in our daily responsibilities. Near the end of the poem, when asked why he does not expand his kingdom, Alfred reveals how deeply this humility has sunk in: “That a sage feels too small for life, / And a fool too large for it. […] I am not wise enough / To rule so small a thing [i.e. Athelney].”[34] Tradition is the embodiment of hope in the future, but it exists only in the present and is preserved only in the present. Alfred’s humbled idealism reflects the balance necessary for tradition to be effective.

Alfred’s self-knowledge is another important virtue. Not only is Alfred’s contentment in ruling the small isle of Athelney a reflection of this humility, but the fact that he rides a gray horse into battle further demonstrates his self-knowledge, specifically that he must die. Chesterton uses the color gray to represent old age and the apparent ends of things, from Colan’s solitary gray cave, to the old woman in the forest, to the graying White Horse that has been neglected, and the “grey [sic] twilight” when Alfred’s army despairs of victory and begins to flee from the Danes. Alfred has the humility to recognize that his time for preserving tradition will shortly pass. Additionally, although Alfred predicts that the heathens will return in the distant future in more subtle, insidious ways, he cannot see “in what wise men shall smite him [the neo-pagan].”[35] Alfred existed for his own time, for the struggles of his day; although he symbolically models how tradition and the defenders of tradition must act, he himself remains a person rooted in a particular moment in history and thus cannot give the precise solutions that we who live in the present must discern and utilize as we scour the White Horse anew. 

With The Ballad of the White Horse Chesterton is at his literary best. He dresses deep paradoxes in stunning poetry by focusing the telescope of our attention on a great man of the past who yet remains ever relevant: “To study humanity in the present is like studying a mountain with a magnifying glass; to study it in the past is like studying it through a telescope.”[36] The dead speak to us and are necessary for us, for “the only possible peacemaker is a dead man, ever since by the sublime religious story a dead man only could reconcile heaven and earth.”[37] Chesterton shows us why Alfred is great: he possessed the kind of heroism that remains in popular imagination precisely because his actions led to the preservation of present-day English society from the invading paganism of the past. The “thousand years” blazed by Guthrum’s baptism marks the 1,000 years of Christendom, in which “Christian men / Guard even heathen things.”[38] Through the inspiration and intercession of Our Lady, Alfred was fortified to become a pillar that Providence used to build up the tower of Christian society, symbolized by the keeping of the White Horse and the child at play. Tradition marks our identity, forges us in virtue, and impels us into the future. It reveals our potential while simultaneously setting our prudent limits. It requires constant vigilance, defense, and maintenance yet endures beyond any individual and even empires, from the “end of the world long ago” to the “children of some second birth.”[39] I agree with Chesterton that Alfred deserves to be called “the Great”; his poem articulates more movingly than a plain logical argument why Alfred is great. The Ballad addresses exactly my concern for tradition and my desire to care for it, to take up the duty of scouring the White Horse, and like Alfred be counted among “the kind of Christ,” who “are ignorant and brave” with “wars you hardly win / And souls you hardly save.”[40]

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Footnotes:

1. Robert Wiesner, “The Ballad of the White Horse: An Introduction and Analysis,” Seton Magazine, Oct. 11, 2013.

2. “Letter 80: From an airgraph to Christopher Tolkien,” in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, eds. Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000), 92.

3. This essay is found in Orthodoxy.

4. G.K. Chesterton, The Ballad of the White Horse, Prefatory Note. The noted anthropologist Mircea Eliade describes the function of tradition in exactly the same way: “[…] to telescope all events in the same atemporal horizon of the mythical beginning.” Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth, trans. W.R. Trask (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1965), xi.

5. G.K. Chesterton, “Alfred the Great,” in Varied Types (New York, NY: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1903), 201–202.

6. Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (New York, NY: Routledge, 1999), 156.

7. Ibid., 161.

8. Chesterton, “Alfred the Great,” 202.

9. Chesterton, Ballad, Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

10. Father Walter Farrell, O.P., notes that curiosity is “merely a tool of pride.” Walter Farrell, A Companion to the Summa, vol. 3, “Chapter XIX—Modesty and Miracles.”

11. Chesterton, Ballad, Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., Book V. Ethandune: The First Stroke.

15. Ibid., Book VI. Ethandune: The Slaying of the Chiefs.

16. Ibid., Book II. The Gathering of the Chiefs.

17. Ibid., Book VI. Ethandune: The Slaying of the Chiefs.

18. Ibid., Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

19. Rom. 4:17.

20. Chesterton, Ballad, Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

21. Ibid., Book VIII. The Scouring of the Horse.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., Book IV. The Woman in the Forest.

24. Ibid., Book V. Ethandune: The First Stroke.

25. Ibid., Book I. The Vision of the King.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., Book VII. Ethandune: The Last Charge.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., Book VIII. The Scouring of the Horse.

31. The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives an example of tradition acting as a warning and corrective when it states that ignorance of man’s wounded nature “gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals” (CCC §407), in a word, culture itself.

32. Chesterton, Ballad, Book I. The Vision of the King.

33. Ibid., Book IV. The Woman in the Forest.

34. Ibid., Book VIII. The Scouring of the Horse.

35. Ibid.

36. Chesterton, “Alfred the Great,” 199–200.

37. Ibid., 199.

38. Ballad, Book III. The Harp of Alfred.

39. Ibid., Book I. The Vision of the King.

40. Ibid.

Hilaire Belloc on the Mood of Faith vs. Its Act

People said that [G.K. Chesterton] might come in at any time because he showed such a Catholic point of view and so much affection for the Catholic Church. That always seemed to me quite the wrong end of the stick. Acceptation of the Faith is an act, not a mood. Faith is an act of the will and as it seemed to me the whole of his mind was occupied in expressing his liking for and attraction towards a certain mood, not at all towards the acceptation of a certain Institution as defined and representing full reality in the world. There is all the difference between enjoying military ideas ... and becoming a private soldier in a common regiment.

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Source: Joseph Pearce, Old Thunder (Charlotte, NC: TAN Books, 2014), 253.

G.K. Chesterton on "Free Love"

They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words — ‘free-love’ — as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word.

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Source: G.K. Chesterton, "A Defense of Rash Vows," American Chesterton Society, accessed April 18, 2014, http://www.chesterton.org/a-defence-of-rash-vows/.

G.K. Chesterton and Austin Ruse on "Gay Marriage"

When I was a freshman in college, I flew to China for my spring break with the chamber singer choir in which I sang for a tour. At the time, there were two homosexual choir members, both of whom I looked up to as singers because they were very talented. I remember as we flew from Shanghai to Beijing, I was seated next to one of them, and we talked for a while on various topics. Eventually he brought up how he had recently gone to some sort of political convention promoting the homosexual cause. He told me how he was sorely disappointed because he had been looking forward to intelligent conversation and meeting other like-minded men but found out that most of the men there simply "confirmed the stereotype about gays," namely, most of them were looking to hook up and have anal sex. My choir friend told me that he felt that such behavior betrayed their very cause because it showed them to be precisely what they're demonized for being: sexual hedonists rather than people who carry intellectual and moral weight. I agreed and still agree.

My father, who did his medical internship in San Francisco hospitals, would tell me stories about how some of the most horrific trauma he would see came from men in the homosexual communities, trauma caused by violent "sexual" activity.

I recently read a fascinating article on the issue of homosexual promiscuity, and I want to quote some excerpts with my emphases:

Lee [a homosexual author] writes about a gay bookstore in Austin, Texas called Lobo’s where if you look in the front window you see bookshelves full of books, gay books certainly but books. In the back, behind a curtain was a section on pornography. No one could be seen among the stacks of books, everyone was in the back room. He said such an arrangement was perfect for the big lie that active homosexuality was normal and non-threatening to any straight person looking in the front window. The reality, though, was that everyone was in the back room with the porn. This was the reality of his life and the lives of gay men....

Lee got a computer and continued his futile attempt to find gay monogamy. He joined a Yahoo group loosely affiliated with Dignity, the “Catholic” organization that affirms gays in their active homosexual way of life. A young man posted a note asking if “any of the subscribers attached any value to monogamy?” He received “dozens of responses, some of them quite hostile and demeaning, and all but one—mine—telling him to go out and get laid because that was what being gay was all about.” ...

Reilly [another author] quotes psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Santinover in Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth that “The typical homosexual (needless to say there are exceptions) is a man who has frequent episodes of anal intercourse with other men, often with many different men. These episodes are 13 times more frequent than heterosexuals’ acts of anal intercourse, with 12 times as many different partners as heterosexuals.”

Reilly goes further. “The most rigorous single study—the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study [1987]—recruited nearly 5,000 homosexual men and found that: ‘a significant majority of these men … (69 to 82%) reported having 50 or more lifetime sexual partners, and over 80% had engaged in receptive anal intercourse with at least some of their partners in the previous two years.’” ...

Dr. Santinover cites a study by two homosexual researchers that found that out of “156 couples studied, only seven had maintained sexual fidelity; of the hundred couples that had been together for more than five years, none had been able to maintain sexual fidelity.” They said, “[t]he expectation for outside sexual activity was the rule for male couples and the exception for heterosexual couples.” 

Reilly cites a 1997 Australian study that showed “only 15% of the men reported having fewer than 11 sex partners to date, while on the other end of the spectrum 15% had over 1,000 sex partners. A whopping 82% had over 50 partners and nearly 50% had over 100.”

Source: Austin Ruse, "The Real Lives of Gay Men," Crisis Magazine, November 22, 2013, accessed November 22, 2013, http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-real-lives-of-gay-men.

There is also a great article by Dale Ahlquist that summarizes G.K. Chesterton's take on "gay marriage."

Chesterton shows that the problem of homosexuality as an enemy of civilization is quite old. In The Everlasting Man, he describes the nature-worship and “mere mythology” that produced a perversion among the Greeks. “Just as they became unnatural by worshipping nature, so they actually became unmanly by worshipping man.” Any young man, he says, “who has the luck to grow up sane and simple” is naturally repulsed by homosexuality because “it is not true to human nature or to common sense.” He argues that if we attempt to act indifferent about it, we are fooling ourselves. It is “the illusion of familiarity,” when “a perversion become[s] a convention.” 

In Heretics, Chesterton almost makes a prophecy of the misuse of the word “gay.” He writes of “the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion.” Carpe diem means “seize the day,” do whatever you want and don’t think about the consequences, live only for the moment. “But the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people.” There is a hopelessness as well as a haplessness to it. When sex is only a momentary pleasure, when it offers nothing beyond itself, it brings no fulfillment. It is literally lifeless. And as Chesterton writes in his book St. Francis of Assisi, the minute sex ceases to be a servant, it becomes a tyrant. This is perhaps the most profound analysis of the problem of homosexuals: they are slaves to sex. They are trying to “pervert the future and unmake the past.” They need to be set free.... 

Philo of Alexandria said, “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle.” But compassion must never compromise with evil. Chesterton points out that balance that our truth must not be pitiless, but neither can our pity be untruthful. Homosexuality is a disorder. It is contrary to order. Homosexual acts are sinful, that is, they are contrary to God’s order. They can never be normal. And worse yet, they can never even be even. As Chesterton’s great detective Father Brown says: “Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down.” 

Marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the order. And the Catholic Church teaches that it is a sacramental order, with divine implications. The world has made a mockery of marriage that has now culminated with homosexual unions. But it was heterosexual men and women who paved the way to this decay. Divorce, which is an abnormal thing, is now treated as normal. Contraception, another abnormal thing, is now treated as normal. Abortion is still not normal, but it is legal. Making homosexual “marriage” legal will not make it normal, but it will add to the confusion of the times. And it will add to the downward spiral of our civilization. But Chesterton’s prophecy remains: We will not be able to destroy the family. We will merely destroy ourselves by disregarding the family.

Source: Dale Ahlquist, "G.K. Chesterton: It's Not Gay, and It's Not Marriage," Crisis Magazine, February 21, 2013, accessed November 22, 2013, http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/g-k-chesterton-its-not-gay-and-its-not-marriage. 

Amateurs vs. Experts

As for “the rearing of the young,” which is the education of the very young, this is a job not for the specialist or the professional, but for the “generalist” and the amateur. In other words, for the mother, who Chesterton argues is “broad” where men are “narrow.” In What’s Wrong with the World, Chesterton forsaw [sic] the dilemma of daycare and the working mother, that children would end up being raised by “professionals” rather than by “amateurs.” And here we must understand “amateur” in its truest and most literal meaning. An amateur is someone who does something out of love, not for money. She does what she does not because she is going to be paid for her services and not because she is the most highly skilled, but because she wants to do it. And she does “the things worth doing,” which are the things closest and most sacred to all of humanity – nurturing a baby, teaching a child the first things, and, in fact, all things.

The line, “if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly,” is not an excuse for poor efforts. It is perhaps an excuse for poor results. But our society is plagued by wanting good results with no efforts (or rather, with someone else’s efforts). We hire someone else to work for us, to play for us (that is, to entertain us), to think for us, and to raise our children for us. We have left “the things worth doing” to others, on the poor excuse that others might be able to do them better.

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Source: ACS Research Services, "A Thing Worth Doing," The American Chesterton Society, accessed November 8, 2013, http://www.chesterton.org/discover-chesterton/frequently-asked-questions/a-thing-worth-doing/

G.K. Chesterton on Democracy, Idealism, and Tradition

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies. What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen. They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election. As a babe I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere mention of it. No; the vision is always solid and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism. But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

I take this instance of one of the enduring faiths because, having now to trace the roots of my personal speculation, this may be counted, I think, as the only positive bias. I was brought up a Liberal, and have always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. The first is this: that the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature. Death is more tragic even than death by starvation. Having a nose is more comic even than having a Norman nose.

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves--the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.

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.

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Source: G.K. Chesterton, "The Ethics of Elfland," in Orthodoxy, Read Book Online, accessed November 8, 2013, http://www.readbookonline.net/read/19446/55548/