Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Note

d of Man; and I feel as if I understood the one hatred of G.K.'s life: his loathing of pessimism. "Is a man proud of losing his hearing, eyesig

The No

PROPH

p a God like a silk ha

ut in

e pompous for they wi

icu

e tired of everything

be tired

t out everything, for

be ca

st out anything, for

be ca

ant, for they shal

re scornful for they

idereth his hair fooli

the type

smart, for men will h

n he is

Ibi

ow me a person who has plenty of worries and troubles and I w

come from the Notebook begun in 1894 and used at intervals for the next four or five years, in which Gilbert wrote down his philosophy step by step as he came to discover it. The handwriting is the work of art that he must have learnt and practised, so different is it from his boyhood's scrawl. Each idea is set down as it com

not hear f

ishness

could fi

y I we

life with its puzzles, its beauty, its fleetingness: "Are we all dust? What a beautiful thing dust is though." "This round earth may be a soap-bubble, but it must

in Orthodoxy, involved not bare existence only but a wea

a litt

able to appre

pen so m

o many presen

t he has and with all that is, but ac

could be a fiery circ

nk I should

his splendour the pessim

ns praise t

if a moun

aise

-tree halfway

h more effectiv

t the religion

he religio

ngs, how much more does it express the truth of humanity-or rather of men, for he saw

found a

said "he was

nd more and

have been

d yet more

we were all mad

er the

whether there will ever come a time when I shall be tired of any one person." Hence a

IRCULATING

ortnight, except with the payment of a penny a day. Any person morally or physically damaging a man will be held re

tter

y at which everybody should meet ev

NVIT

bert Ch

s the p

nity's

n Dec. 2

q., The Ear

dislike. He liked to get wet. He liked to be tired. After that one short period of struggle

grace be

ri

before the pla

re the concert

before I o

fore sketchi

, boxing, walking

re I dip the p

ial gift; something th

EN

es anot

I have had ey

reat worl

morrow begi

I allow

R OF A MA

Lord, for the st

the hay-carts y

ilt and h

past me a

for the great wi

own nostrils

R OF A MA

ght close

owed before

rd, for a child I

have never

overs, art, literature, knowledge, humour, politics,

at the age of 16 he was, he tells us in Orthodoxy, an Agnostic in the sense of one who is not sure one way or the other. Largely it was this need for gratitude fo

s the hig

s a story and e

that can touch the wo

s not

the heading, "A

like about this novelist is that he take

it is as he meets the other characters

ORN ON

re has been

he has come to

he find

as come to th

t is a lo

s a new Ga

geny will peo

making these

tells it? Life is a

a problem,

f the last Day

but can those know Him who are characters i

at it is to walk along

ht you might meet God

ready, against this he

infidelity blacker

w of secularist, p

t of thos

od as an old

IC

n the wood in t

he rook, "Go

on the hearth, the voi

e n

dog, cat,

ker, sea,

a thousand

o

. How and where can these two incommensurates find a meeting place? What is Incarnation? The gre

ST

lying upwards. G

en given, to ask for more? Let us love mercy and

uenchable. God is

es glimpses. Let him dare all things, claim all things: h

ands mingling to make

places in these notes he regards Him certainly only as Man-but even then as The Man, the Only Man in whom the colossal scale, the immense p

S AUR

trong man, following the better th

e cannot think of him as wanting for a moment in any virt

n him. He does not command

CARP

ions of Mar

loquising, not m

words of

knocked i

ather's

his mind is wrestling with the question, the

AS

you ask me what

ck of feet

ntern show

door s

F OUR LORD

of varied power

ce, democracy,

love rises

to an obscure tr

late a b

LI

e," he said, an

with the most gi

ead

CRUC

slope of a

r stood starin

urely this was a

apter of his

hat for

RA

ho dwelt in the e

t look at a she

rnfield, a rav

mountain, withou

t to be divin

their reception by a childhood task of routine lessons. But I do not think at this date it had occurred to him to question the assumption of the period: that official Christianity, its priesth

eatre and the child looks at his ha

ch should stand by

is a handsome crucifix yo

lished order, should not be alert to all that Our Lord's life signified, was one of the problems. It wa

uestion of whether, placed as a sentinel of

ose our sense of reality that the only way to enjoy and be grateful for our possessions is to lose them for a while. The shortest way home is to go round the world. In this story of "White Wynd" he applies the parable only to each man's life and the world he lives in. But in Orthodox

shed in The Co

is given to write the great new song, and to compile the new Bible, and to found the new Church, and preach the new Religion

at was happening now in his mind. Without a single Catholic friend he had discovered this wealth of Catholic truth and he was still travelling. "All this I