Chesterton - A Brief Survey of His Life, Ideas & Legacy

7/30/2019 Chesterton - A Brief Survey of His Life, Ideas & Legacy

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JASO N LEO N AR D 04 /29 /2013 WO R LDV I EW & APO LO G ET I C S I I

W O R L D V I E W & A P O L O G E T I C S I I

G . K . C H E S T E R TO N


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Introduction

The turn of the twentieth century marked a rich time in the history of the United Kingdom.

Imperial Britain had a presence on six continents, the Victorian era saw the population of the

United Kingdom more than double, and the ideas of Darwin, Marx, and Freud were influencing

every area ofof scientific, social and economic life. The Edwardian Era (1901-1910), which

opened the twentieth century to the United Kingdom, was remembered as a golden age with

long summer afternoons and garden parties.1 In to this golden age Gilbert Keith Chestertons

voice was heard saying, We are learning to do a great many clever things... the next great task

will be to learn not to do them.2 He was not against scientific, social, or economic progress, but

he was for the dignity of common people and saw a threat to that in the modern ideal.3 The

modern ideal tossed out traditional narratives and religious sources of the authority in favor of

skepticism and science. Chesterton, though, began with the traditional ideals and, armed with

the dignity of the Common Man, he went after the modern world.

Writing & Fighting

Born in 1874 to a Unitarian Universalist family, Chesterton was not raised in a particular

theological framework. He became a Christian in the process of listening to arguments against

Christianity4; this foreshadows the very method he used in debates with atheist and agnostics

later. He joined the Church of England but never had any affection for the teachings of Calvin or

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1 Priestley, J. B. (1970). The Edwardians. London: Heinemann. pp.55-56, 280-2902 Chesterton, Varied Types(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1903), 228. As quoted in Ahlquist, Dale, Common Sense 101, 123

3Ahlquist, Dale., Apostle of Common Sense., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003) Kindle Location 57

4 Ahlquist, Dale., Common Sense 101., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 184


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Luther and referred to his Christianity as orthodox from the start. He would later say that this

was part of his slow conversion to Catholicism.5

Early on in his education he was not recognized for his good school work and, though

intelligent, never went to college. Instead he went to art school and was fascinated with

literature and art. He considered himself an idler in art school and accidentally became a

writer instead6; which he considered to be the easiest of all professions. He began his writing

career by penning book reviews for a magazine and stumbled into being paid as a book critic.

Within five years theIllustrated London News hired him to write weekly on anything except

religion and politics, to which Chesterton responded, There is nothing else worth writing

about.7 He wrote for theIllustrated London Times for the next thirty years, and along the way

wrote a hundred books, contributions to 200 more, hundreds of poems, five plays, five novels,

two hundred short stories and over 4000 newspaper essays. Furthermore, Chesterton was

broadcast on the radio all over the United Kingdom and often toured to have public debates. He

was always writing, which means he was always thinking, always engaged in a controversy,

which, to Chesterton meant that he was always engaged in a fight8. He fought his battles with a

pen and cigar, with prose and wit, with humility and humor. This concept of fighting is

particularly key to understanding his motives; it is the very reason he chose to be a journalist. I

could not be a novelist; because I really like to see ideas or notions wrestling naked, as it were,

and not dressed up in a masquerade as men and women. But I could be a journalist because I

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could not help being a controversialist.9 He believed that we all wake up on a battlefield10

where the battle between light and darkness is raging.11

[This world] can be made beautiful again by beholding it as a battlefield. When we

have defined and isolated the evil thing, the colors come back into everything else. When

evil things have become evil, good things, in a blazing apocalypse, become good. There

are some men who are dreary because they do not believe in God; but there are many

others who are dreary because they do not believe in the devil.12

He fought because he loved. He loved the world, and particularly the ordinary people in the

world, so much that he was compelled to fight them and fight for them. He understood that you

cannot love something you are not willing to fight for and fight against.

You cannot love a thing without wanting to fight for it. You cannot fight without

something to fight for.... Wherever human nature is human... there exists this natural

kinship between war and wooing, and that natural kinship is called romance... and every

man who has ever been young at all has felt, if only for a moment, this ultimate and

poetic paradox. He knows that loving the world is the same thing as fighting the

world.13

He believed that he was fighting the whole world, to turn the tide of the whole time we live in,

to resist everything that seems irresistible.14

Fighting for the Dignity of the Common Man

Chesterton fought for the jolly mass of mankind.15 He believed in the intrinsic dignity of a

created human being over and against scientific discoveries, social structures or systems of

philosophies. Principally, he believed that free will - the right for a man to make his own

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meaningful and even foolish decisions - is the essence of human dignity.16 Further, he argued

that the Church is the only thing which can protect and ensure free will. In light of this,

Chesterton fought against everything which encroached upon the dignity of the Common Man,

free will, or the authority of the Church.17 If landlords and laws and sciences are against [the

Common People], landlords and laws and sciences must go down.18 His arguments for society

began with a traditional understanding of human dignity and, therefore, he was at odds with the

modern culture.

The Emptiness of Modern Progress

One of Chestertons keenest images of the emptiness of modern culture was British

Imperialism. He watched an unhappy England expand throughout the world and he thought it

especially objectionable that an Empire whose heart is failing should be specially proud of the

extremities. He discerned that Europeans were excited about Imperialism precisely because

they did not want to share the Europe they already had. This is a classic example of

Chesterton turning something on its head. At first blush, it seems that sharing is precisely what

Europeans were trying to do. Chesterton argued that they instead wanted to recreate a kind of

sham Europe - a lesser Europe - which it can dominate.19 The irony, of course, is that the

people in London dreamed that life in the colonies was better than life at home; that derivative,

conquerable, lesser realities were better than the old one. This is precisely what Chesterton

thought of modern science and modern theories.

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18 Chesterton, G. K., Whats Wrong with the World., (Amazon Digital Services), 282

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Since the reformation, tradition and religious dogma had been substituted with fad after fad

and fashion after fashion.20 The erosion of tradition - which meant the erosion of the traditional

view of mans dignity, the significance of free-will, and the importance of family - left modern

experts grasping for new philosophies, sciences, methods, and meanings of life. Chesterton

believed the erosion of tradition in light of what he called fashion demonstrated an imbecile

habit21 which allowed for anything but progression22. Western culture had given up the

dogmatic understandings of meaning and purpose for skepticism and the pursuit of new

discoveries. In Chestertons mind, this led to despair and hopelessness.

...in the bleak and blinding hail of skepticism to which [man] has now been long

subjected, he has begun for the first time to be chilled, not merely in his hopes, but in his

desires. For the first time in history he begins really to doubt the object of his

wanderings on earth. He has always lost his way; but now he has lost his address.23

Darwin, Freud, and Marx developed theories which dominated and pervaded all modern

thought at the turn of the twentieth century.24 Each theory and their derivatives carried with

them degrading and depressing fascinations which left no serious conclusions of the world. 25

In fact, he understood modern progression and emancipation to be something which has really

been a new persecution of the Common Man and common sense.26

Darwinism is something which Chesterton thought irrelevant in its content27 but particularly

damaging because it was set up as a false religion.28 The implications ofsurvival of the fittestas

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21 Chesterton, G. K., Orthodoxy., (Great Britain: William Clowes & Sons, 1934), 67




25 109

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applied to science were not particularly worrisome, but he argues that it led to a modern day cult

of progress or The absurd necessity for maintaining that everything is always getting better.29

It also became something closed off from critique, and therefore authoritative. 30 Given that

there was no longer any religious narrative guarding the sacred nature of anything, everything in

the physical world (material, biological, psychological, etc) became a subject of scientific

inquiry for the sake of efficiency and progress; we became a people in a hurry to go no where in

particular.

Freuds theories gave rise to psychotherapy and the ironic notion of consciousness of the

unconscious. Chesterton was particularly concerned with this because it replaced the

confessional with psycho-babble.31 Keeping in mind the dignity of ordinary people, he saw

that this led to a lack of ownership over sinful actions and so removed them from any place

where they could utilize their own free will or obedience, which Chesterton understood as the

most passionate form of personal choice.32

Although Marxism was never swallowed whole in Chestertons culture, the underlying

suggestions of state-run affairs was running rampant. As the dignity of the Common Man was

disintegrating, the respect for and trust in the Common Man disintegrated as well. Government

bureaucracies and big business were controlling more and more of the affairs of Common Man.

One of the chief ways this troubled Chesterton was in the arena of education.

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It is the great paradox of the modern world that at the very time when the world decided

that people should not be coerced about their form of religion, it also decided that they

should be coerced about their form of education.33

Compulsory education meant, for Chesterton, that the state is not only replacing the authority of

religion and redefining individual conscience34, but more importantly that it is undermining the

natural authority of the family.35 Compulsory and state-run education implies that families are

not capable of educating their own children. This creates the idea that home is merely a

jumping off place for the school rather than school as a preparation for the home.36 Even

more damaging is the fact that schools were being swept away by wave after wave of scientific

speculation37 when they should be teaching the young mens enduring truths, and let the

learned amuse themselves with their passing errors.38 All of this led Chesterton to say that the

only purpose for Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their common

sense.39

One particularly damaging way in which all of these theories come together is in a reverence

for specialists. Darwinism creates a desire and respect for the elite and, at a basic level, argues

that everything alive will only survive if it becomes even more elite. Freuds psychoanalysis

means the Common Man needs a specialist to help navigate the dangerous waters ofthe

conscious and unconscious. Marxism demands that the state has specialists who know what is

best for the Common Man, for the Common Man cannot educate, let alone govern, himself.

These all imply the Common Man is merely a responsibility or a nuisance. Furthermore, given

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that, by definition, there can only be a few specialists, it necessarily leaves the Common Man

undignified.

Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the

absurd reason that he can sing better. If our civilization goes on like this, only one man

will laugh, because he can laugh better than most.40

The Purpose of Science

In the modern culture then, the word science became sacredand used to the threaten the

family and the freedom of the citizen41 and created a cold, narrow, fatalistic, and utterly anti-

Christian 42view of humanity. Chesterton acknowledged that many modern ideas contained

some element of truth, the problem was that they took a hundredth part of the truth, then offered

it not merely as something, but as everything...43 Science was propped up to the modern world,

not as a tool or a toy44, but as a system of meaning and purpose; an unquestionable new religion.

What we are fighting is a new and false religion... It may almost be called a religion of

irreligion. It trusts itself utterly to the anarchy of the unknown; and, unless civilization

can sober it with a shock of disappointment, it will be for ever inexhaustible in novelties

of perversion and pride.45

Given that the modern man does not recognize any intrinsic dignity in humanity and has no

address or claim to meaning, the modern realists summon all these million creatures to

worship their god; and then have no god for them to worship...46 Science is a tool for

philosophy, it cannot impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to

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say.47 Using science and modern fads to articulate meaning and purpose in life is like a door

with no house to it; a gigantic gate to nowhere...48 This is not surprising for Chesterton since he

believes that the first effect of not believing in God is that you lose your common sense.49

What He Fought For

The modern world shook off the coils of religion and tradition in an effort to be free, but

according to Chesterton, they simply found themselves with smaller and more dehumanizing

laws50; such as the need to improve regardless of happiness (Darwin), the hopeless pressure to be

aware of your unconscious (Freud), the need to learn what isnt helpful (Marx). This is the

huge modern heresy of altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering the

human conditions to fit the human soul.51 The only way to be free is through dogmatic rules of

right and wrong which validate the dignity of the Common Man.52 Without these rules, or what

Chesterton calls a stable statement of truth53, it is impossible tobuild a proper society.

For Chesterton, a proper society, one which respects the dignity of the Common Man, is

centered around the family. Without the family, argued Chesterton, we are helpless before the

state.54

The place where babies are born, where men die, where the daily drama of mortal life is

acted, is not an office or shop or a bureau. It is something much smaller in size, yet much

larger in scope. And while nobody would be such a fool as to pretend that the home is

the only pace where people should work, or even the only place where women should

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work, it has a character of unity and university that is not found in any of the fragmentary

experiences of the office or the shop or the bureau.55

The family is the place where free-will and human dignity are best discovered and demonstrated

and it is the only place where a human being is truly free.56 Within a family, a man can become

civilized, a woman honored as queen, and children educated better than any other institution.57

He argued that disintegration of rational society started in the drift from the hearth and the

family; the solution must be a drift back.58

On the back of this idea, or rather under its feet, Chesterton argued for Distributivism: the

philosophy that property ownership is a fundamental right, and the means of production should

be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under

the control of the state or by accomplished individuals.59 Property, according to Chesterton,

is merely the art of democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can

shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of heaven.60 He argued that a small, poor

plot of land can best provide an arena for dignity for a man through means of exercising free will

in the creativity of how to use his land - something Chesterton thought every average man would

know how to do even if he was not a specialist in some other way. Property ownership also

provided the space where families could operate freely and sovereignly.

The ordinary man asked for so little, and he has been offered so much. He has been

offered bribes and systems; he has been offered Eden and Utopia and the New Jerusalem,

and he only wanted a house; and that has been refused him.61

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59http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributivism


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributivismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributivismhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributivism


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So we see that Chesterton begins with the idea of human dignity and works from there to

understand the importance of family, and from there the importance of property. There are many

ways in which he fought against the modern culture of his time, but these are the things he

fought for. He fought against anything which threatened the dignity of the Common Man and

fought for the very things which affirmed or strengthened that dignity.

The idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families free but still

families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic, of one man one house - this

remains the real vision and magnet of mankind. The world may accept something more

official and general, less human and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-

hearted woman who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy

one...62

Ultimately, however, Chesterton fought for the Church, and in particular the Catholic Church.

He knew in every single argument that he was fighting for the only framework which can hold

up human dignity: Christianity. He fought for property because God gave man property. He

fought for family because God gave man family. He fought for free will because God gave man

free will. All ofthese were offered right out of the gates in the Genesis account. He did not

believe that Christianity had been tried and found wanting. Rather, he believed it had been

found difficult and left untried.63 He understood that Christianity alone offered hope for the

Common Man, and hope is the thing which can sustain the Common Man. Chesterton believed

that all the heresies that have attacked human happiness in his time were all variations either of

presumption or of despair.64 To fight for hope and the common man, Chesterton argued that

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64 Ahlquist, Dale., Apostle of Common Sense., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003) Kindle Location 590


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we cannot be vague about what we believe in, what we are willing to fight for, and to die for.

There are twenty ways of criticizing a battle, but only one way of winning it.65

Humility & Joy

His battles were not won only through his specificity, however. The masses and the specialists

alike were willing to listen to him because he, like the Christianity he was defending, was neither

presumptuous nor despairing. He never wanted to crush anyone with his arguments, he wanted

to convert them.66 While one scholar would call him one of the deepest thinker who ever

existed67, Chesterton was his own worst critic.68 He would even agree with his critics when

they attacked him.69 His secretary would say, It gave him no pleasure to excel over other

people.70 Chesterton has sometimes been called the Master without a Masterpiece, but to

look for a masterpiece would undermine the whole of his message. He believed that you know

you are close to the truth not when something proves it, but when everything proves it.71

Furthermore, he wanted dignity restored to the Common Man, not for his work to be

remembered.

It so happens that I couldnt be immortal; but if I could I shouldnt want to be... No, I

dont believe in a man working purely for the sake of art. It does him good to work for

bread and cheese. It is putting himself into the stream of life... What I value in my own

work is what I may succeed in striking out of others.72

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65 Ahlquist, Dale., Common Sense 101., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 2266 278

67 Quoted in Ward, Maisie, Gilbert Keith Chesterton., (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1942) 620. As quoted in Ahlquist, Dale., Apostle

of Common Sense., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003) Kindle Location 49


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70 Collins, Dorthy, Recollections, in John Sullivan, ed., G. K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal., (London: Harper and Row, 1974),

157 As quoted in Ahlquist, Dale., Common Sense 101., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006),1571Chesterton, G. K., Orthodoxy., (Great Britain: William Clowes & Sons, 1934), 76

72 Current Opinion, The Flabbergasting Genius of Mr. Chesterton, Volume 41. 171


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His humility is evident by the fact that one of his closest friends was someone with whom he

disagreed with about most everything: George Bernard Shaw. He once said a man who blames

himself is invulnerable73 and he demonstrated it with his life.

Neither can his humor be overemphasized. In reading any of his books, even one like Whats

Wrong with the World, the reader cannot help but laugh and drink the intoxicating pleasure of

happiness before he dives back in to the oceanic weight of the arguments at hand. He cast a

spell of joy74 in every room and when asked about his abundant joy he would say, I suppose I

enjoy myself more than most other people, because theres such a lot of me having a good

time.75 Keep in mind that he was 64 and weight over 300 pounds. Everything was serious,

everything was full of laughter. He carried a swordstick because he liked things which come to a

point.76 There is Chesterton at his most serious. He believed that laughter is the one

indestructible brotherhood, the one undeniably social thing.77 His fame and acceptance in spite

of his serious critiques and warring with culture testified to that very thing.

Chestertons Legacy

In light of the fact that many people today have never heard of Chesterton or read anything he

has written, it is worth considering his legacy. His writings and lectures have influenced

thousands and thousands of people over the last 100 years. He would probably first recognize

how God used his writings to bring many converts to Christianity, particularly to Catholicism.78

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75 Collins, Dorthy, Recollections, in John Sullivan, ed., G. K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal., (London: Harper and Row, 1974),

175 As quoted in Ahlquist, Dale., Common Sense 101., (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006),11

76 Chesterton, G. K., Orthodoxy., (Great Britain: William Clowes & Sons, 1934), 54


78 263


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C.S. Lewis claimed that Chestertons book, The Everlasting Man, was the single most helpful

thing which led him to Christ.79 He wrote a novel which inspired Michael Collins to lead a

movement for Irish independence.80 One of his essays in theIllustrated London News inspired

Gandhi to lead a movement to end British Colonial rule in India.81 His biography of Charles

Dickens is widely considered to be the best biography of the author and the work which made

the experts take Dickens seriously (something which Chesterton probably wouldnt have cared

about).82 Not to mention the poems he wrote which were sung in WWI or the fact that none of

his major works have been out of print since they were written. The American Chesterton

Society has even submitted a request to the Catholic Church that Chesterton be beatified. 83 Were

that to happen, we could expect his works to be more widely known.

At the turn of the twentieth century Chesterton was not off writing in a hermitage, or in an

attic. He was writing all these things in the daily newspapers of his time, and his voice was

indeed heard around the world.84 Perhaps he isnt read today because he was a journalist, or

because he so clearly attacks the very ideas which drive our culture. He should be read though.

He argued well that civilization has run on ahead of the soul of man and is producing faster than

he can think and give thanks.85 He wants happiness for the Common Man, and he believed that

came through the dignity we find in Jesus Christ; the dignity we live out in family and on land.

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79 Lewis, C.S., Surprised by Joy(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955), 190-191


81Kindle Location 126

82Kindle Location 126

83 Antonio, Gaspari (2009-07-14). ""Blessed" G. K. Chesterton?: Interview on Possible Beatification of English Author". Zenit: The

World Seen From Rome (Rome: InnovativeMedia). Retrieved 2010-10-18.


85 Chesterton, DailyNews, February 21, 1902. As quoted inAhlquist, Dale., Apostle of Common Sense., (San Francisco: Ignatius

Press, 2003) Kindle Location2055
http://www.zenit.org/article-26454?l=englishhttp://www.zenit.org/article-26454?l=english


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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Ahlquist, Dale. Apostle of Common Sense. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003)Kindle

Edition

Ahlquist, Dale. Common Sense 101 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006)Kindle Edition

Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy. (Great Britain: William Clowes & Sons, 1934)Kindle Edition

Chesterton, G. K. Whats Wrong with the World. (Amazon Digital Services)Kindle Edition

Websites

http://www.chesterton.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwardian_era

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwardian_erahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwardian_erahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chestertonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chestertonhttp://www.chesterton.org/http://www.chesterton.org/

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