STATE  OF  THE  WORLD  FORUM

PARADOX  –  COPING  WITH  COMPLEXITY

Lindsay  Mell

State  of  The  World  Forum
Occasional  Paper  2005/1

ACADEMY OF THE WORD
April  2005

‘Everybody takes it for granted that universal and ordinary arrangements, historic institutions, daily habits, are reasonable … 

They are themselves paradoxes; 
paradox is built into the very foundation of human affairs.’

- Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Appeared in Black and White, February 14, 1903.

Published in The Man Who Was Orthodox,

Selections from the Uncollected Writings of G K Chesterton,

A L Maycock (ed.), Dennis Dobson, London, 1963.

Dedicated  to  Ming  Huei

Life is complex ! … We hear this often, don’t we? … And so it is. 

Oh, for this to be otherwise – as apparently many people would prefer … 
‘Back to the simple life’, John Farnham seems to implicitly exhort us. 

But is this really what people want?! 

Such a conundrum is the epitome of paradox.  
From a particular perspective or dimension it is ‘that which is absurd, but may be really true’ (Chalmers Dictionary: 960).  Yet from another dimension it may be ‘well founded’, but just ‘self-contradictory’ (Shorter Oxford Dictionary: 1508).  While from yet a further dimension, it could be ‘… exhibiting some contradiction with known laws’. 

However, such diversity of myriad dimensionality is not how paradox is perceived in the contemporary conventional mode.  Rather, in this context it resembles more an aspect of irony, from my perspective.  It is more a matter of semantics, and more specifically about ‘… the conveyance of meaning by words whose literal meaning is the opposite’ (Chalmers: 694), or through which ‘… the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used’ (Oxford: 1113). 

Nevertheless, irony can also be: 
‘… a situation or utterance that has a significance unperceived [or at least not perceived comprehensively] at the time’ (Chalmers: 694), or basically can be ‘a contradictory outcome of events’ (Oxford: 1113).  Yet even through these definitional variants anomaly intervenes.  

It is through this latter interpretation of paradox as perhaps irony I consider the marvellous contribution to humanity of Gilbert Keith Chesterton 
(1874-1936) can be most aptly realised and appreciated. 

Chesterton’s work elucidates paradox as: 
‘… a phenomenon that elicits some conflict with preconceived notions of what is reasonable or possible’ (Oxford: 1508), for me. 

Yet there is not much difference in the trajectory of paradox to irony, 
and thence to further deterioration as parody, for me.  This is the common contemporary trajectory through which sensitivity to intuit and discern the delicate intricacies of paradox is dulled, as it must be, through sardonic presumptions, or descent into glib banal humour. 

Thence paradox becomes parody … 
It becomes potentially ‘a burlesque imitation’ of reality, or ‘ridicule by mimicking’ (Chalmers: 966; Oxford: 1515).  It becomes raw mimesis … Regrettably and unfortunately, despite its exceptional brilliance, 
Chesterton’s work is often on the verge of this condition.  Because Chesterton is so prone to use paradox as the agent of raw humour and entertainment.  While, for all his integrity, life remains ‘a riddle’ for Chesterton, as with his Christian religion, and therefore never really makes it out of the captive mould of a game.  Therefore, his ‘orthodoxy’ never quite acquires the ‘liberty’ he aspires for it.  Ultimately, orthodoxy requires well-grounded authority if it is to be accepted.  Broadly, this is why the predominant phenomena of paradox and orthodoxy remain so afflicted in this dilemma, as in the contemporary context.   

The reason for this is that there is a continuity and trajectory to human endeavour which we call ‘history’, even if we choose not to so name it, 
as many contemporary theorists would prefer.  The challenge for us is to discern what is the significance and meaning of this continuity, which for me is also consistent in form, so we can then realise and appreciate its trajectory and/or ontology. 

The dilemma is that this continuity of being, experience and endeavour is situated in the context of certain conventions, which some feel secure and affirmed enough to call ‘laws’ or ‘rules’.  The reality is that in the context of our existence we establish laws through which to live, and thereby hope to order our lives.  It can be said, in this sense, our existence is not antinomial.  However, the issue here is the extent to which we rely on legality, rules and conventions as the basis for our situating ourselves in the life context.  
It seems there are prospects for us to explore less rule-bound relations, personally and interpersonally.  

While, as Chesterton so often starkly reveals, this situation often exists through a ‘… contradiction between two [or more] associations for each of which there seem to be adequate grounds’ (W V Quine in 
Fontana Modern Thought: 41).  What Chesterton then further reveals is that this situation often also seems to constitute ‘… a single unacceptable and often self-contradictory conclusion for which there are seemingly irresistible grounds’ (Quine in Fontana: 41), or which has ‘unacceptable or contradictory consequences’ (E P Northrop in Fontana: 626).  

However, the greater reality is that this situation ultimately only ensues if we allow it, or if we so choose to interpret its significance and meaning.  We can also choose to hold diverse perspectives of this concurrently. 

By the time G K Chesterton was underway with his analyses, Lewis Carroll (1832-1898) had written his hugely popular classic comedy or parody as intricate paradox entitled Alice in Wonderland in 1865.  While by 1887 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) had revealed how paradox could be applied in a realist situational context to human behaviour through the launch of his detective character, Sherlock Holmes, and the succession of mystery tales he wrote thenceforth.  Paradox thence became a populist phenomenon, embedded in the popular culture of so-called ‘reality’ entertainment. 

Soon thereafter, a succession of writers applied elements of these forms in diverse genres and contexts.  Herbert George Wells (1866-1946) applied similar forms to science fiction – The Time Machine (1895) and 
War of the Worlds (1898) – and ultimately to socio-political commentary in the context of everyday life and romance novels – Kipps (1905) and 
The History of Mr Polly (1910). 

Meanwhile, Chesterton managed to blend all these elements into what appeared as a much more subtle and philosophically exploratory fictional work, which he titled The Man Who Was Thursday – A Nightmare, 
which appeared in 1908. 

It is probably a reasonably valid analysis that Chesterton sought to reaffirm faith in the broad continuity of history, and particularly in the efficacy of orthodoxy, through this work.  It is written in defence of orthodoxy, at least in some sense.  So, in this way it is a work most pertinent for these our so-called ‘post-modern’ times, written at a time in historical continuity which broadly resembles our own times.  For me, Chesterton’s analysis is chillingly reminiscent of where we are all really situated right now.  While we would do well to appreciate this, as people often seem destined to realise the recurrence of history in similar forms, as George Santayana (1863-1952) observed. 

Indeed, the years of this new Millennium and century reveal remarkably similar facets to the early years of the 20th century for me.  If we can perceive that Chesterton effectively described graphically through his early work the context in which the First World War duly transpired – and it is said he was among a few commentators who realised the comprehensive potential of Adolf Hitler up to 1936 (when Chesterton passed on from this life) – then I believe we can learn much from The Man Who Was Thursday and Chesterton’s distinctive contributions.  Whatever happens, Chesterton’s work is vital to a contemporary realisation of paradox, from my perspective.  Let us hope humanity does not leave it until it is too late to realise and appreciate emphatically this reality. 

  

Morality and ethics as complex phenomena

Chesterton’s appreciation of variously situated perspectives is evident through his insight into ‘the goodness of humanity’ as realised ‘… when we feel that we are nothing but the inheritors of a humiliating splendour.  But there are other times when everything seems primitive … when the whole earth seems so young and experimental …’ (123)  While he posits that  ‘… The matters which most thoroughly evoke this sense of the abiding childhood of the world are those which are really fresh, abrupt, and inventive in any age …’ (123) 

Morality is the ground through which true art is cultivated, according to Chesterton.  

‘Nothing sublimely has ever arisen out of mere art, any more than anything essentially reasonable has ever arisen out of pure reason.  There must always be a rich moral soil for any great aesthetic growth …’ (126) 

Everything in life and reality can be realised and appreciated through diverse and/or different perspectives, and it is through the quality of ‘wonder’ in the context of perspective that phenomena are evident in their most graphic form, as Chesterton envisages.  

‘… So long as we regard a tree as an obvious thing, naturally and reasonably created … It is when we consider it as a prodigious wave of the living soil sprawling up to the skies for no reason in particular that we take off our hats to the astonishment of the park keeper.  Everything has in fact another side to it …’ (126-127) 

Chesterton reveals how graphic the variations in perspective can be through reference to the Book of Job.  

‘… It is significant that in the greatest religious poem existent, 
the Book of Job, the argument which convinces the infidel is not … a picture of the ordered beneficence of Creation; but, on the contrary, a picture of the huge and undecipherable unreason of it …’ (127)  Correspondingly,  
‘… The well-meaning person who, by merely studying the logical side of things, has decided that ‘faith is nonsense’, does not know how truly he speaks …’ (127) 

However, the reality of paradox is far more complex than mere duality and/or contradiction, as Chesterton reveals simply through his masterful ability to deftly juxtapose elements of perspective. 

For instance, when he considers the populist preoccupation with ‘success’, 
he asserts that the proliferation of tracts on this topic then (1935) were actually ‘about nothing; they are about what is called Success … To being with, of course, there is no such thing as Success.  Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful.  That a thing is successful merely means that it is … Any live man has succeeded in living (132) … Yet our modern world is full of books about Success and successful people which literally contain no kind of idea (133) …’ 

Nevertheless, Chesterton reveals adamantly his disdain for the ethic of competition.  

Admittedly, in playing cards  
‘… You must have grit and snap and ‘go on to win’ ‘, he confessed (134).  However, he continued in ironic tone,  ‘… The days of idealism and superstition are over.  We live in a time of science and hard common sense, and it has now been definitely proved that in any game where two are playing IF ONE DOES NOT WIN THE OTHER WILL,’ or so Chesterton characterises the position of a hypothetic ‘philosopher of Success’.  

Yet Chesterton expresses his comprehensive perceptive reservations of this assessment:  ‘… but I confess that if I were playing cards I would rather have some decent little book which told me the rules of the game.  Beyond the rules of the game it is all a question of talent or dishonesty …’ (134). 

Consequently, Chesterton proceeds to reveal:  
‘… when we really worship anything, we love not only its clearness but its obscurity.  We exult in its very invisibility …’ (135)  

Similar variations of perspective pertain to familiar moral and ethical virtues as complex phenomena in general.  

‘… In our society, temperance will not help a poor man to enrich himself, but it may help him to respect himself.  Good work will not make him a rich man, 
but good work may make him a good workman …’ (137) 

Out of this great entrenched context of complexity, Chesterton could therefore find some affirmative moral principles through which to broadly deeply ground his perspective of paradox.  

‘… Telling the truth about the terrible struggle of the human soul is surely a very elementary part of the ethics of honesty …’ (142).  

Accordingly, Chesterton considered Shakespeare to be ‘a great moralist’.  ‘Whenever he alludes to right and wrong it is always with this old implication.  Right is right, even if nobody does it.  Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong about it.’ (142) 

While tending not to really acknowledge this phenomenon, 
Chesterton inferred that the acceptance and appreciation of blended international and national perspectives culminated in a resilience to avoid the tendency to imitate the character as expressed through other national 
socio-cultural aspects. 

‘… If we are to be international we must be national … 
International peace means a peace between nations, not a peace after the destruction of nations … It will generally be found, I think, that the more a man really appreciates and admires the soul of another people the less he will attempt to imitate it; he will be conscious that there is something in it too deep and too unmanageable to imitate (143) …’ 

Chesterton’s broad claim of the French seems to be that: 
‘… their obscenity it the expression of their passionate love of dragging all things into the light (143) …’  

While, alternatively, ‘… English … balance snobbishness and make it human …’ (145), as with ‘… the great kindness of the English, their hospitality, 
their unconscious poetry, their sentimental conservatism (145) … It requires long years of plenitude and quiet, the slow growth of great parks, 
the seasoning of oaken beams (145) … to produce at last the generous and genial fruit of English snobbishness.  And it requires battery and barricade, songs in the streets, and ragged men dead for an idea, to produce and justify the terrible flower of French indecency (146) … The French do not seek comfort here [in this life], but rather unrest.  This restless people seeks to keep itself in a perpetual agony of the revolutionary mood (147) …’ 

There appears to be a form of fascination with duality as paradox for Chesterton.  While, although there is a form of recognition of polarity embedded in his analyses, he does realise this as a situation through which complexity is embedded in whatever perspectives are involved.  Hence this whole dilemma presents as a form of conundrum.  This is evident in his deep interest in the perceived polarity of French and English culture. 

‘No one can understand Paris and its history who does not understand that its fierceness is the balance and justification of its frivolity … The crown of roses is also a crown of thorns.  Its people are too prone to hunt others, but quite ready also to hurt themselves … They taunt and torment themselves; sometimes they even deliberately oppress themselves.  Thus when the mob of Paris could make a government to please itself, it made a sort of sublime tyranny to order itself about …’ (185) 

If Chesterton apparently regards France with a grudging respect it is soon possible to glimpse his earnest appreciation of the intellectual authenticity of French culture from his commentary on Brussels.  

‘Now Brussels is Paris without this constant purification of pain (185) … 
It has the part which is cosmopolitan – and narrow; not the part which is Parisian – and universal …’ (186)  Accordingly, ‘… there is no English broad fun, no German kindly ceremony, no American exhilaration and, above all, 
no French tradition of fighting for an idea (186) …Being a nation means standing up to your equals, whereas being an empire only means kicking your inferiors …’ (187) Chesterton continues caustically. 

He then relates the dialogue of two Belgians debating on a tram.  
One viewed ‘progress in science’ as ‘the new guide of humanity’, whereas the other cautioned this also required ‘the sentiment of the human justice’ to be acquired through ‘education’ (187)  While,  ‘Without doubt Humanity was on the march, but towards the sentiments, the ideal, the methods moral and pacific.  Humanity directed itself towards Humanity (187) … The Humanity … was now intellectual.  Tolstoy had refined all human souls with the sentiments the most delicate and just.  Man was become a spirit …’ (187-188), the less scientifically driven Belgian countered. 

Then the tram abruptly stopped.  
Chesterton had travelled too far on this journey, and was ‘Heaven knows where’ (188).  He ventured into a nearby wood – ‘… one little path [which] somehow … suggested that it might lead to some sign of life’ (188), yet in which,  ‘… Now I suddenly felt something much more practical and extraordinary – the absence of humanity:  inhuman loneliness (188) …’  
Even though he wasn’t really lost, ‘… the mood may hit one anywhere …’ (188) 

Then Chesterton saw a light, and ultimately a cottage.  
There he came upon the warmth of a humble generous family situation, although he couldn’t communicate with any of the family members through language, and was soon on his way back to Brussels.  For him:  
‘… Humanity was hooked on to an accidental picture’ epitomised by ‘the stable where Christ was born’ (189), familiar to him through the family cottage situation into which he stumbled. 

The paradoxical element Chesterton readily recognised as pervasive in the broad socio-cultural context, was also abundantly apparent to him in the juxtaposition of private and collective enterprise.  

‘The practical tendency of all trade and business today is towards big commercial combinations, often more imperial, more impersonal, 
more international than many a communist commonwealth – things that are at least collective if not collectivist.  It is all very well to repeat distractedly:  
‘What are we coming to with all this Bolshevism?’  It is equally relevant to add:  ‘What are we coming to, even without Bolshevism?  The obvious answer – Monopoly.  It is certainly not private enterprise … Monopoly is neither private nor enterprising.  It exists to prevent private enterprise …’ (195) 

Consequently, Chesterton was most sensitive to the importance for terms to be adequately and relevantly defined in any discourse context.  

Thence, when it comes to define the nature of capitalism, he observes:  
‘… If capitalism means capital, anybody is capitalist.  But if capitalism means [that] particular condition of capital, only paid out to the mass in the form of wages, then it does seem something even if it ought to mean something else (196) … I do not care whether I call it one thing or the other … so long as it is applied to one thing and not the other.  I do not mind using a term as arbitrary as a mathematical sign, if it is accepted like a mathematical sign (197) … 
A Socialist Government is one which in its nature does not tolerate any true and real opposition.  For there the Government provides everything; and it is absurd to ask a Government to ‘provide’ an opposition. 

Then, when he later reviews the notion of ‘Service’, and prominent views of those who uphold it, Chesterton proposes  ‘… But I do definitely think that both sides [of the debate], and perhaps especially the iconoclastic side, 
need what the whole modern world needs – a fixed spiritual standard even for their own intellectual purposes (219) … What is the matter with the cult of Service is that, like so many modern notions, it is an idolatry of the intermediate, to the oblivion of the ultimate.  It is like the idiots who talk about Efficiency without any criticism of Effect.  There arises the horribly idea that industry, reliability, punctuality, and business activity are good things; 
that more readiness to serve the powers of this world is a Christian virtue … But the serious case cannot stated without once more raising the real question of whether they had not better try to define what they intend to serve.  All these silly words like Service and Efficiency and Practicality and the rest fail because they worship the means and not the end (220) …’ 

Meanwhile, those concerned are admonished to remain aware of the vital place of Faith in all this by Chesterton.  

‘It would be far truer to say that the Faith gives a man back his body, and his soul, and his reason, and his will, and his very life’ (226) …’ 

There is a sense in which, through the spirit of paradox, Chesterton reveals quite a refined and exquisite appreciation of the dilemmas which could divide or frustrate social and personal equanimity.  Yet in this appreciation there often remains a profound element of duality also. 

The place of detail in complexity

In The Duty of the Historian (1920) Chesterton expounds how the study of history implies ‘two quite distinct purposes – the ‘superior purpose’ of providing ‘a good story’ from which children can learn enthusiastically, and an ‘inferior purpose’ for ‘historians … to understand the special ways in which it [history] has been weak and foolish …’ (106-107)  For, ‘… The highest and noblest thing that history can be is a good story …’ (106) 

Alternatively, ‘… Historians have to explain the horrible mystery of how fashions were ever fashionable …’ (107)  The ‘inquiries of historians’ into epochal ‘eccentricities’ constitute ‘political education’ to avoid or solve ‘problems in the complicity of practical affairs’ (107-108).  While children admire ‘the glory of Trafalgar’, the adult ‘question[s] its utility’ (108).  ‘For the wisdom of man alters with every age, his prudence has to fit perpetually shifting aspects of inconvenience or dilemma.  But his folly is immortal …’ (108) 

Similarly, in the public context, it is not the ‘great man’ who is needed; 
rather, clarity proceeds from sifting through the complexity of fine detail (109).  This is ultimately a phenomenon for people to experience incrementally throughout their lives.  

‘… We do not need a great man for a revolution, for a true revolution is a time when all men are great.  Where despotism is successful is in very small matters … Here the man who knows his mind is really wanted, for no one else ever thinks his own mind worth knowing.  No one knows where to go precisely, because no one cares where he goes (109) …’ 

However, ‘… I am by no means so sure that Napoleon gave a better turn to the whole French Revolution … [or] that Cromwell has really improved the religion of England (110) …’ 

Correspondingly,  ‘… We do not need the learned man to teach the important things.  We all know the important things, though we all violate and neglect them … For every man knows the inmost core of every other man …’ (110) 

History is realised through careful study of ‘the inside’ out, although we never actually ‘reach the outside’, according to Chesterton (110).  ‘… Some day … the secret society may even be dissolved; but we all know the secret’ 
(110-111) – that is, deep in our being, so to speak. 

Along with consideration of the place of the historian, Chesterton also expounded on the much more substantive content of Historical Novels  (1920).  These are really deplete shallow perspectives of certain popular historical topics through which Chesterton shows how superficial vague opinions about the detail of history can be. 

‘We might almost say that a man is not allowed to write an historical novel except about four different historical periods about six different historical characters …’ (182), while avoiding dissenting views of other ‘romances’. 

Accordingly, iconic personalities were as important in the popular culture then, as now.  ‘… If you go in for writing historical novels at all, somebody – the publisher or the office-boy – makes you [write about ‘Henry of Navarre’] (183) …’  

There were many further conventions for such popular novels.  
In any such Paris-based Renaissance historical story, common ground for such novels would be:  ‘… There must be no people to speak of in Paris, though it was the people of Paris who, for good or evil, changed the whole course of history (183) … Above all, slap in the very middle of the Wars of Religion, nobody must seem to have any clear idea of what his own religion is about (184) … At this stage of the writing of historical novels, it is important to be an imitator of Dumas (184) …’ 

Correspondingly, various stunningly ironic conventions applied to historical treatments of the French Revolution.  

‘… The essential principles of this sort of novel are [among others]:  
That the populace of Paris from 1790 to 1794 never had any meals … 
They stood about in the street all night and all day, sufficiently sustained by the sight of Blood, especially Blue Blood (184-185) … Aristocrats are of two kinds – the very wicked and the entirely blameless; and both are invariably good-looking … Such things as the invasion of France, the idea of the Republic, the influence of Rousseau, the nearness of national bankruptcy, 
the work of Carnot with the armies, the policy of Pitt, the policy of Austria, 
the ineradicable habit of protecting one’s property against foreigners, and the presence of persons carrying guns at the Battle of Valmy – all those things had nothing to do with the French Revolution, and should be omitted (185) …’ 

After this insightful jaunt through wayward perspectives then, which served to ostracise the complexity of French historical/ cultural developments – what’s new ! – we have some wise counsel from Chesterton.  ‘… Now, considering the number of picturesque struggles there have been in the world, it seems to me that these subjects might be given a rest (185) …’ 

Based around an associated perspectival scope and theme, yet guiding the irony into a deeper form of paradox, Chesterton’s cameo analysis of the work of Jane Austen (1775-1817) – The Evolution of Emma (1920) – 
is formidable.  It is also so pertinent and resonant of contemporary interpersonal and social relations.  In this piece a feast of paradox prevails, and it is possible to glimpse how entrenched in complexity the conundrums of paradox can be. 

On ‘… the remark that [Austen] was quite untouched by the towering politics of her time’ (85), Chesterton observes:  ‘… 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 (85) …’ 

While  ‘… The view that a thing is old-fashioned in itself is 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 (85) …’ Chesterton points out. 

‘… The truth is that a phrase can be falsified by use without being false in fact; it can seem stale without being really stilted (85) …’  Chesterton notes, in a form which has compendious implications for the contemporary study of discourse analysis! 

Chesterton declares Jane Austen ‘… is perhaps most typical of her time in being supremely irreligious.  Her virtues glitter with the great secular epoch between medieval and modern mysticism (87) …’  He refers to the Austen novel ‘Northanger Abbey’ to develop his perspective on this.  ‘… In that small masterpiece, ‘Northanger Abbey’, her unconsciousness of history is itself a piece of history … A real crime ‘had’ been committed in Northanger Abbey … It was the crucial crime of the 16th century when all the institutions of the poor were savagely seized to be the private possessions of the rich … But there is a positive as well as a negative way in which [Austen’s] greatness, 
like Shakespeare’s, illustrates history and politics because it illuminates everything (87) … 

‘… 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 Parliament have done.  And at least she did consistently ignore them; she ignored them where she was ignorant … She was not a student of sociology, she did not study the poor … She had to do with the human heart; and it is that which cometh out of the heart that defileth a nation, philanthropy, efficiency, organisation, social reform … 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 (88) …’ 

‘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 form the charge of common cynicism, the great novelist does find the spring of her heroine’s errors, and of many or ours.  That spring is a philanthropy, and even a generosity, 
secretly founded on gentility (89) …’ 

Emma Woodhouse’s ‘… 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 … she would have thought it her duty to act on the wider modern scale; she would have had public spirit and political grasp (89).

‘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 this situation I describe is really this:  
that the new sentiment of humanitarianism has come when the old sentiment of aristocracy has not gone … their social reform is but their social refinement grown restless … 

‘And in this old teacup 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 …’ (90) 

Basically characterised as conservative politically, indeed Chesterton did seem to be generally so positioned.  Although, even in this, paradox broadly provided his perspectives, as The Yule Log and the Democrat (1920) reveals. 

The then populist icon of the log fire and hearth, with the family gathered around in cosy chairs, was a pervasive image to which Chesterton allocated some considered attention. 

While declaring he ‘believe[s] very much in the ‘Fireside Woman/ Man’, Chesterton then proceeds with breathtaking paradoxical flair.  

‘… Why should the woman be tame because she is the nearest to the wildest thing in the world?  It is much more absurd to say it is prosaic to live upon the edge of a precipice.  It is tenable that some people would be prosaic anywhere, but it is not the fault of the precipice (138) …’ 

Of course, there is a deeper purpose in Chesterton’s paradoxical allusions, 
as he soon proceeds to explain.  

‘… Herein lies all the absurdity of the alternatives to domesticity paraded by our progressive friends (138-139) … I am not speaking, of course, of work that must be done, especially in abnormal times; I am speaking of the psychology of tedium and the romance of life … if in some outlying shed a woman has to stand counting tickets, or tying up parcels from morning till night, that woman is supposed to be free.  She has Burst the Fetters.  She is Living Her Own Life.  But there is supposed to be nothing but dullness for the woman who is face to face with that elemental fury which drives and fashions the whole (139) …’  He means ‘the fireside’ by his reference to the ‘elemental fury’. 

Chesterton continues:  
‘The fire is in this, perhaps, the finest and simplest symbol of a truth persistently misunderstood.  These elementary things, the land, the roof, 
the family, may seem mean and miserable (139) … But the things themselves are not mean and miserable … If the Fireside Woman is dull, it is because she never looks at the fire.  It is because she is not, in the wise and philosophical sense, enough to a fire-worshipper.  And she lacks this faculty because the whole drift of the modern world discourages that creative concentration (140) … 

‘The engine … was … suggested because James Watt looked at the kettle.  
I will not conceal a suspicion that our society might have evolved better if he had looked at the fire (140) … he might have taught [‘the Trade Guilds’] … 
to take hold of the new energy and turn it towards democracy, instead of going off and handing over his invention to the Capitalists.  For the defect which betrayed all Watt’s school and generation … was precisely that it did not draw from these primal sources of piety and poetry.  It was not sufficiently religious, and, therefore not sufficiently domestic; and the rich rode it down at last … The truth can be told well enough by saying that James Watt would not really have comprehended the word Christmas; and would have been much annoyed if told to consider the Yule log instead of the kettle … And the spirit of real democracy will not re-emerge until it rises from the fireside and comes forth in the red reality of fire (141) …’ 

Then Chesterton proceeds to unfold the importance of the sense of ‘place’ in all this.  As I interpret and construe the inference which thence emerges for me from this, what Chesterton discerns as this sense of place is also 
a place to be … And, by implication from the truths embedded in Chesterton’s archetypal imagery, this place to be also needs to be and/or become a place to live in the whole comprehensivity of this perspective and perception.  Such interpretation and analysis, inspired by Chesterton’s superbly insightful discernment, implies the way through the deep complexity and conundrum through which paradox is constituted.  While such is the form of analysis through which Chesterton’s imagery can be suitably elicited – through such elaboration of the significance, relevance and therefore meaning and resonance of his work in the context of its complexity, such that this applies distinctively in the contemporary context. 

‘But there is another feature in the flaming hearth which illustrates its natural kinship with Christmas.  It is a ‘place’ [Chesterton’s emphasis], as Christmas is a time; and these vivid limitations are vital to man as a mystic.  It is not merely that the idea of everything being in its right place makes all the difference between a fire in a house and a house on fire.  It is that the fireplace is a frame; and it is the frame that creates the picture … 
The universe of the mere universalist is one of the very low organisms.  
The theosophic generalisations about Nirvana and the All may be compared to the American fashion of abolishing the fireplace altogether and heating the whole house artificially to the same temperature – a depressing habit (142) …’ 

Perhaps this is why the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘fireside chats’ became so popular when he became the United States President (1933), 
the political implications here in association with Chesterton’s other imagery being correspondingly rich! 

‘Shakespeare, himself like a large and liberal fire round which winter tales are told, has hit the mark of festive things.  Shakespeare does not say that the poet loses himself in the All (142-143) … He says the exact opposite.  [Chesterton in more positivist mood!]  It is ‘a local habitation and a name’ that the poet gives to what would otherwise be nothing … there are others who think, at least, that their thought strikes deeper and pierces to a more subtle truth in the mind … 

Others ‘… believe that this fable [Christmas] is a fact, and that the other fables cannot really be appreciated even as fables until we know it is a fact.  For them, personality is a step beyond universality; one might also call it an escape from universality (143) …’ 

Convergence of reality and belief

The sense and spirit of such analogy, infused with similar deep sentiments of paradox and irony, is sustained through Chesterton’s piece entitled 
A New Plan for The Universe (1920). 

‘Mr Bernard Shaw … compared a woman in the home to a parrot in the cage, saying that mere custom made us think the connection natural … The answer, it has always seemed to me, is strangely obvious.  It is surely plain that the housewife is not the bird in the cage, but the bird in the nest (165) …’ 

Thenceforth Chesterton extends the analogy to the realms of evolution and eugenics vis-à-vis fashion.  

‘… Artistically, the sun-fish or the hornbill do not look in the least like accidents; but it might be maintained they look like fashions (166) …’ 

Moreover,  ‘… The monsters may be only antiquated fashion-plates.  
For this is one of the numberless neglected fallacies in the clotted folly of Eugenics.  Even if we could in the abstract breed humanity well, there would be a flutter of modes and crazes about what was considered well-bred (166) …’  For, even in the natural world, for Chesterton, ‘The dog is bred with design; but surely not always with discretion (166) …’ 

Chesterton invokes ‘poetry and religion’ to provide some bearings in this.  

‘… And this is an essential of any poetry and any religion.  It must appeal to the origins and deal with the first things, however much or little it may say about them.  It must be at home in the homeless void, before the first star was made.  The one thing every man knows about the unknowable is that it is the Indispensible (167-168) …’ 

Consequently, Chesterton decries religion established on fashionable, and by implication conventional, belief.  

‘… Thirty years ago we only needed the First Person of the Trinity; and thirty years later we have discovered we only need the Second.  This sort of fashion-plate philosophy will no doubt go on as usual … Here again, it seems obvious that all the doubts which legitimately attach to the idea of a progressive humanity are absolutely fatal to the idea of a progressive divinity.  A man may be progressing towards God; but what is a God progressing towards? (169) … 

‘Unless the background of all things is good, it is no substitute to make the foreground better; it may be right to do so for other reasons, but not for the reason that it is the root of religion.  Materialism says the universe is mindless; and faith says it is ruled by the highest mind.  Neither will be satisfied with the new progressive creed, which declares hopefully that the universe is half-witted’ (169-170). 

Where reality and belief converge is a theme which Chesterton brings forward in the context of the more ostensibly mundane yet elemental realm of everyday life through his piece on Wishes (1920).  Here the etymology and derivation of Chesterton’s more universal perspectives becomes clear.  
He considers ‘… th[e] common human fancy of a wild wish is disappointed by being fulfilled … My own personal feeling about it, I think, is that a world in which all one’s wishes were fulfilled would, quite apart from disappointments, be an unpleasant world to live in … The Ego would be too big for the Cosmos … Ajax defied the lightning; but I like the lightning because it defies me (76) … 

‘It is, indeed, in the clash of circumstances that men are most alive.  
When we break a lance with an opponent the whole romance is in the fact that the lance does break.  It breaks because it is real; it does not vanish like an elfin spear.  And even when there is an element of the marvellous or impossible in true poetry, there is always also this element of resistance, 
of actuality and shock (76-77) … 

‘It is true, of course, that marvels, even marvels of transformation, illustrate the noblest histories and traditions … [However] The wonder-working done by good people, saints and friends of man, is almost always represented in the form of restoring things or people to their proper shapes (77) … But, on the other hand, the popular tales about bad magic are specially full of the idea that evil alters and destroys the personality (77-78) … In all such instinctive literature the denial or identity is the very signature of Satan.  In that sense it is true that the true God is the God of things as they are – or, at least, as they were meant to be (78) … 

‘Now the transition may seem queer; but this power of seeing that a tree is ‘there’, in spite of you and me, that it holds of God and its own treeishness, 
is of great importance just now in practical politics … We must see these things objectively, as we do a tree; and understand that they exist whether we like them or not.  We must not try to turn them into something different by the mere exercise of our own minds, as if we were witches (78) … 

‘It is sill[y] not to see that a man can fire off a gun for a prejudice as well as he can for an ideal (78-79).  I disagree with the Orangemen; I don’t disagree with the Nationalists; but I deny neither.  I sympathise with the Labour revolt; 
I don’t sympathise with the Feminist revolt; but I deny neither (79) …’ 

At this stage in his writing, Chesterton appears to attest to oppositional tendencies.  While yet, actually, his writing seems to be pervaded with the complexity and conundrum which appear to be subtler yet more endemic elements of paradox.  

If we travel back to Chesterton’s earlier writings, the element of paradox he purveys then is much more blatantly and emphatically identified with contradiction.  

On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family, from Heretics (1905) applauds the family as the ‘ultimate institution’ (76).  
The family is portrayed as admirable in that it exudes the same element of existential spontaneity essential to human development which epitomises ‘the village’ (76).  

‘… The man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world.  
He knows much more of the fierce vanities and uncompromising divergences of men …’ (76)  Because his companions are chosen for him, rather than by him (76).  He lives in ‘a clan’, rather than ‘a clique’ (76-77). 

‘A big society is a society for the promotion of narrowness … 
Sociability, like all good things, is full of discomforts, dangers and renunciations …’ (77)  However, what Chesterton characterised as the modern ‘club’ then had become a place where men could remain ‘unsociable’ (77), keeping to themselves, rather than exposing themselves to the rawness of people unlike themselves.  ‘… They do not seek to destroy his principles and assert their own; the stranger monsters of the suburban street do seek to do this … What we dread about our neighbours, in short, is not the narrowness of their horizon, but their superb tendency to broaden it.  And all aversions to ordinary humanity have this general character …’ (78) 

Moreover, ‘… shrinking from the brutal variety of common men is a perfectly reasonable and excusable thing as long as it does not pretend to any point of superiority … Fastidiousness is the most pardonable of vices, but it is the most unpardonable of virtues …’ (78)  Accordingly, on these grounds, Chesterton described Nietzsche’s aristocracy as ‘an aristocracy of weak nerves’ (79).  

Rather, Chesterton interposes: 
‘… But we have to love our neighbour because he is ‘there’ … He is the sample of humanity which is actually given us.  Precisely because he may be anybody he is everybody.  He is a symbol because he is an accident.’ (79) 

As Chesterton interprets this situation: 
‘… Those who wish, rightly or wrongly, to step out [of the world of their own respective families] … do definitely wish to step into a narrower world … 
This is, indeed, the sublime and special romance of the family (80) … It is romantic because it is arbitrary … The element of adventure … exist[s]; for an adventure is, by its nature, a thing that comes to us.  It is a thing that chooses us, not a thing that we choose.  Falling in love has often been regarded as the supreme adventure, the supreme romantic accident.  In so much as there is in it something outside ourselves, something of a sort of merry fatalism, this is very true … But in so far as we have certainly something to do with the matter … In this degree the supreme adventure is being born … There we do see something of which we have not dreamed before … When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step … into a world which has its own strange laws (81) …’ 

While Chesterton seems to omit any distinction of paradox from contradiction in this early stage of his work, he does show how perspectives of what constitutes an opposite phenomenon can emanate from insubstantial and/or misguided attitudes.  Correspondingly, in Mr McCabe and a Divine Frivolity (Heretics 1905), Chesterton challenges the assertion of ‘funny’ as ‘the opposite of serious’ (86), along with the tendency to polarise what are differences and/or divergences, not opposites.  

‘Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else.  
The question of whether a man expresses himself in a grotesque or laughable phraseology, or in a stately and strained phraseology, is not a question of motive or of moral state, it is a question of instinctive language and 
self-expression. 

However, Chesterton ambiguously does seem to polarise ‘sincerity’ and ‘solemnity’.  

‘… In the modern world sincerity is almost always on one side and solemnity of the other.  The only answer possible to the fierce … attack of sincerity is the miserable answer of solemnity …’ (87).  

Here Chesterton would do better to consider the more authentic quality of being earnest, rather than solemn, which is an attribute of greater substance, from my perspective. 

Universal citizens and the ground of being

Meanwhile, Chesterton, in The Ethics of Elfland (Orthodoxy 1908), configures the juxtaposition of perspectives of reality in such a form as serves to respect the complexity and intricacy of the principles implied, so that the context of the contradiction he presumes is broadly tempered.  

Although, he does reveal a predilection to allow his reverence for ideals to be channelled into a preoccupation with the contrived autonomy of ideology.  

‘… I have not lost my ideals in the least, my faith; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was … 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 have always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity (254) … 

‘In short, the democratic faith is this:  that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves … I have never been able to understand where people got the idea 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 method (255) …

‘… Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors … Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who happen to be walking about … The things I believed most [in the nursery] … the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales.  They seem to me entirely reasonable things (256) … Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of common sense … Modern minor poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush or the brook; but the singers of old epics and fables were supernaturalists, and talked about the gods of brook and bush (257) …’  

It can be said that ‘… mathematical and merely logical sequences … are, in the true sense of the word[s], reasonable [and] necessary …’ (257)  

Yet,  ‘… There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is the test of the imagination {not ‘reason’ and/or ‘necessity’].  You cannot ‘imagine’ two and one not making three.  But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit (258) …’ for instance.  

When scientific men, Newton included, tried to establish a law about the falling apple hitting Newton’s nose, ‘… they could not see the distinction between a true law, a law of reason, and the mere fact of apples falling … 
We have always in our fairy tales kept the sharp distinction between the science of mental relations in which there really are laws, and the science of physical facts, in which there are no laws, but only weird repetitions … scientific men … do really talk as if they had found not only a set of marvellous facts, but a truth connecting these facts (258) … 

‘… A law implies that we know the nature of the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed some of the effects … It is no argument for unalterable law … that we count on the ordinary course of things.  We do not count on it; we bet on it … All the terms used in the science books, ‘law’, ‘necessity’, ‘order’, ‘tendency’ and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis which we do not possess … Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist.  He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations (259) … 

‘… Every man has forgotten who he is.  One may understand the cosmos, 
but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star … We are all under the same mental calamity … We have all forgotten what we really are.  All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten.  All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget (260) … And the strangest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling.  It was an ecstasy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity … The test of all happiness is gratitude (261) …’  

Chesterton then cites a Doctrine of Conditional Joy in that:  
‘… All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld …’ in the context of fairy stories (261). 

Curiously, Chesterton, vaunting his ironical cast, accuses W B Yeats of being effectively too ‘intellectual’ to be ‘stupid enough to understand fairyland’ (261).  So, although Chesterton exalts in common humanity, he is really also appreciative of the place of the intellectual in this paradox through which civilisation is constituted.  Even ‘… the lawlessness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness, founded on reason and justice’ (261), as he notes. 

After all, ‘… the true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all.  In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition (262).  In fairy land, the ‘… thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright and brittle … And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment to the whole world … I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash … Such it seemed to was the joy of man, either in elfland or on earth; the happiness depended on ‘not doing something’ which you could at any moment do and which, very often, it was not obvious why you should not do … And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited.  The frame was no stronger than the picture (262) … 

‘For this reason … I never could join the young men of my time in feeling in what they called the general sentiment of ‘revolt’ … I did not feel disposed to resist any rule simply because it was mysterious … Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman.  To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once … The aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things … [but] it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure … [through] symbolic sacrifice … I left the nurse guardian of tradition and democracy, and I have not found any modern type so sanely radical or so sanely conservative (263) …’  For Chesterton, ‘… this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful … But the great determinists of the nineteenth century were strongly against this native feeling that something had happened an instant before (264) … 

‘The modern world as I found it was solid for modern Calvinism, for the necessity of things being as they are.  But when I came to ask them I found they had really no proof of this unavoidable repetition in things except the fact that the things were repeated.  Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational … I speak here only of an emotion, and of an emotion at once stubborn and subtle.  But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition (264) … grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony …’ (265)  But,  ‘… The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence …’ (265)  Rather this may represent God and Heaven exulting in this recurrence, as does a child, and declaring avidly ‘Do it again’ (265). 

‘… I had always vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderful:  now I began to think of them as miracles in the stricter sense that they were ‘wilful’.  I mean that they were, or might be, repeated exercises of some will (265) … And this pointed to a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose … I had always felt life first as a story:  and if there is a story there is a story-teller (266) … 

‘But modern thought also hit my second human tradition.  
It went against the fairy feeling of strict limits and conditions.  The one thing it loved to talk about was expansion and largeness … It is quite futile to argue that a man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree … But Herbert Spencer … turned mankind into a small rationality … [as] in the early romances of Mr H G Wells (266) …’ 

According to ‘the materialist’, as Chesterton envisages such a person,   ‘… The cosmos went on forever, but not in its wildest constellation could there be anything really interesting … The grandeur or inifinity of the secret cosmos added nothing to it … [while] we ourselves were only part of its machinery.  We were either unable to do things or we were destined to do them 
(266-267) … This modern universe is literally an empire; that is, it is vast, but it is not free … [Yet] A man chooses to have an emotion about the largeness of the world; why should he not choose to have an emotion about its smallness? (267)’ 

Clearly, just as the universe is fragile yet precious, our truly distinctive contributions to it as universal citizens are correspondingly precious in their significance.  While we also are responsible for sharing as vibrantly as we can in this endeavour.

We may seem insignificant in the vast panorama of the succession of humanity.  Yet, when all our various contributions are realised in the whole context the vast collective achievement of each portion of human enterprise is astounding to behold in all the beauty of its intricate continuity and the consistency of its pattern. 

We are each a special contribution to this, however modestly we may situate our life journeys … while each life journey is replete with myriad relevant facets.  Until we pass from this world it seems inevitable we could realise the greater place and significance of each of our lives.  Hopefully, we will muster the equanimity and mutual maturity to live authentically in this, respecting and appreciating life as the rich adventure it can be, while caring deeply for others.  Providential beneficence will surely be there to support our earnest efforts. 

Meanwhile Chesterton considers Robinson Crusoe ‘… celebrates the poetry of limits’ and ‘the wild romance of prudence’ (268).  Yet Chesterton himself testifies to the distinctive nature of Crusoe’s experience and adventure in this.  Therefore, it is an adventure which proceeds despite the odds, rather than in conformity with these, as if they were limits.  However, if we are now living in ‘the wreck of Western culture’, as John Carroll maintains in his work entitled Humanism (1993: Fontana Press) Chesterton seems to reveal the means through which to cope in this fragile situation:  ‘… it is better to remember how all things have had this hair-breadth escape:  everything has been saved from a wreck.  Every man has had one horrible adventure …’ (268)  

Hence, existence and reality seem to embody universal facets saved through the ‘cosmos’.  ‘This cosmos is indeed without peer and without price:  for there cannot be another one.’ (268) 

This, in turn, effectively becomes what I would term the ground of being for Chesterton.  

‘… These are my ultimate attitudes towards life; the soils for the seeds of doctrine …’ (268)  These seeds become a form of deep grounding in authority for Chesterton then, from my perspective.  ‘… These in some dark way I thought before I could write, and felt before I could think …’ (268)  
While inimitably and inevitably for me, the sense of personal meaning, significance and contribution beams through in this essentially ‘magic’ context:  … I came to feel as if [this] magic must have a meaning, 
and meaning must have some one to mean it.  There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art …’ (268)

Despite his occasional allowance of polarity and contradiction, 
Chesterton remains a firm faithful advocate and exponent of the true spirit of paradox.  Thus his deconstruction of the paradox of perspectives of ‘optimist’ and ‘pessimist’ in response to populist notions of what these terms might imply proceeds accordingly.  

‘… The only thing which might be considered evident was that they could not mean what they said; for the ordinary verbal explanation was that the optimist thought this world as good as it could be, while the pessimist thought it was as bad as it could be …’ (270) 

Chesterton infers that people establish their values on the basis of how they value their experience of life, not the other way around in 
The Flag of the World (Orthodoxy).  The sense of belonging to which Chesterton refers forms what I cite as the ground of being in this sense.  

‘… A man belongs to this world before he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it … To put shortly what seems the essential matter, he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration (270) …’    

However, each life context represents a complex challenge in some sense or other.  

‘… My acceptance of the universe is not optimism, it is more like patriotism.  
It is a matter of primary loyalty … Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot (277) …’  

Since Chesterton’s time, given particularly the inception of the United Nations, we have now moved into an age where individual and interpersonal responsibility and autonomy are more resonant considerations in the context of a broad sense of mutual maturity.  Therefore, I hereby interpose a broader sense of ourselves, each and all, as universal citizens, rather than merely ‘cosmic patriot[s]’.  

Chesterton maintains ethics intervened in human relations through an essentially religious embodiment, which then manifested in a utilitarian form.  This represented devotion to a sense of ‘place’.  

‘Morality’ derived originally from ‘We must not hit each other in the holy place’ (272), rather than ‘I will not hit you if you do not hit me’ (272) … They gained their morality by guarding their religion.  They did not cultivate courage.  
They fought for the shrine, and found they had become courageous …’ (272) 

So morality and ethics were effectively acquired, rather than isolated, 
codified and gravitated towards, like a magnet.  Rather, a much more messy, exploratory, incremental process was involved.  Hence, in that ‘the pessimist (who is the ‘cosmic anti-patriot’) … states only facts, it is essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive’ (272-273), as Chesterton puts this. 

Thus Chesterton contends the inadequacy of the pessimist is in that ‘he does not love what he chastises … He will be less inclined to the reform of things; more inclined to a sort of front-bench official answer to all attacks, soothing every one with assurances’ (273).  

While ‘… bad optimism … comes in with the reasonable optimism.  
Rational optimism leads to stagnation:  it is irrational optimism that leads to reform’ (273).  Moreover,  ‘… France is a good instance of the working paradox.  Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract and arbitrary; 
and nowhere else is reform more drastic and sweeping.  The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics’ (274).  

Women were also afflicted with a similar epidemic principle of the paradoxical, from Chesterton’s perspective.  

‘… A man’s friend likes him but leaves him as he is:  his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into someone else …’ (274) 

Perspectives and reason derived through belief and faith

This substantiates my contention, through my work on and entitled 
Deep Friendship, that it is vital for anyone who loves to discern, realise and appreciate the qualities of ‘deep friendship’ as much as ‘deep love’. 

‘… Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism’ (274) – quite harsh and chauvinistic of Chesterton, but the essential principle is evident.  ‘… Love is not blind; this is the last thing that it is.  Love is bound; and more it is bound the less it is blind … Before any cosmic reform we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance …’ (274)  This is why it is so vital for each nation of people to enunciate some form of Bill of Rights to accompany their National Constitution.

However, having proceeded thus far with the denouement of paradox, Chesterton yet seems prone to break out into polarity and contradiction on the difference of the suicide and martyr; which he considers to be oppositional.  

‘A martyr is a man who cares so much for something outside him that he forgets his own personal life.  A suicide is a man who cares so little for anything outside him, that he wants to see the last of everything.  One wants something to begin:  the other wants everything to end …’ (274).  

Then there is an affirmative probing insight from Chesterton which authenticates his struggle to distinguish paradox and contradiction.  

‘… Had Christianity felt what I felt, but could not (and cannot) express 
– this need for a first loyalty to things, and then for a ruinous reform of things? (276) … Christianity was accused, at one and the same time, of being too optimistic about the universe and of being too pessimistic about the world (276-277) …’    

Then a consolidatory insight about the substance of belief.  

‘… What a man can believe depends on his philosophy … 
It is simply a matter of a man’s theory of things …’ (277)  Where Christianity was concerned,  ‘… Its peculiarity was that is was peculiar … Christianity was the answer to a riddle, not the last truism offered after a long talk (277)  
Mere ‘… altruism will not culminate in ‘a moral revolution’, for Chesterton (278).  

Such altruists Chesterton calls ‘unselfish egoists’:  
‘… An unselfish egoist is a man who has pride without the excuse of passion … Of all religions the most horrible is the worship of the god within … That Jones shall worship the god within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones (278).  For Chesterton,  ‘… Christianity came into the world … that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards (278) …’ 

Chesterton then asserts the relevance of Christianity for his time as emphatically as it was asserted originally.  What emerges most resonantly from this perspective is that Christianity was born of conflict.  

‘… The only people who really enjoyed this world were busy breaking it up; and the virtuous people did not care enough about them to knock them down.  In this dilemma (the same as ours) Christianity suddenly stepped in and offered a singular answer, which the world eventually accepted as the answer.  It was the answer then, and I think it is the answer now (279) … 

‘… Briefly, it divided God from the cosmos.  
That transcendence and distinctness of the deity … was really the only reason why any one wanted to be a Christian.  It was the whole point of the Christian answer to the unhappy pessimist and the still more unhappy optimist … 
All descriptions of the creating or sustaining principle in things must be metaphorical, because they must be verbal … The only question is whether all terms are useless, or whether one can, with such a phrase, cover a distinct ‘idea’ about the origin of things.  I think one can, and so evidently does the evolutionist, or he would not talk about evolution.  And the phrase for all Christian theism was this, that God was creator, as an artist is a creator (279) …’ 

Evident in all this was a splitting off phenomenon, whereby processes and developments were positioned as necessarily divisive.  Thence Chesterton explores some basic implications which proceed from the Christian tradition.  

‘… According to most philosophers, God in making the world enslaved it.  According to Christianity, in making it, He set it free … It was as if God had within a great play, but the actors and managers had since made a great mess of it (280) …’  Consequently, as a Christian,  ‘… One could be at peace with the universe and yet be at war with the world …’ (280)  For Chesterton this meant,  ‘… It was as if I had been blundering about since my birth with two large and unmanageable machines, of different shapes and without apparent connection – the world and the Christian tradition … All the elements of this situation seemed to interact and fit together admirably.  Instinct after instinct was answered by doctrine after doctrine (280) … My sense that happiness hung on the crazy thread of a condition did mean something when all was said:  it meant the doctrine of the Fall (281) …’ 

Where and how a person situates and establishes their place in life then becomes vital, as Chesterton reveals in his own case.  

‘… The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do ‘not’ fit in to the world … The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence.  But I had heard that I was in the ‘wrong’ place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring (281) …’ 

All these considerations affect and influence how perspectives and reason are derived, as Chesterton thence explains in The Paradoxes of Christianity (Orthodoxy).  

‘… The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one.  The commonest kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.  Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians.  It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its unexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait (282) …’  

Chesterton gives the instance of the ‘duplicity’ in life we come to expect, just as we find aspects of one side of the human body repeated on the other side.  

‘… At last [a person] would take [this] to be law; and then, where he found a heart on one side would deduce that there was another heart on the other.  And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong … It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is the uncanny element in everything.  It seems a sort of secret treason in the universe … Scientific men are also still organising expeditions to find a man’s heart; and when they try to find it, they generally get on the wrong side of him (282) …’ 

So, the paradox in all this deepens with the complexity established.  

‘… Of course, anything can be believed in any age.  
But, oddly enough, there really is a sense in which a creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed more fixedly in a complex society than a simple one … For the more complicated seems the coincidence, the less it can be a coincidence … The complications of our modern world prove the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of the plain problems of the ages of faith … When once one believes in a creed, one is proud of its complexity, 
as scientists are proud of the complexity of science.  It shows how rich it is in discoveries.  If it is right at all, it is a compliment to say that it’s elaborately right (283) … a man is [only] really convinced of a philosophic theory 
… when he finds that everything proves it.  And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up (283-284) … 

‘The whole case for civilisation is that the case for it is complex … 
But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible.  There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of helplessness.  The belief is so big that it takes a long time to get into action … All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there (284) …’  

As Chesterton astutely points out, any critique of Christianity must be comprehensively consistent to be credible, yet rarely is.  This element of consistency is vital in the substantiation of belief and faith from my perspective, as I have revealed through my earlier work. 

‘… Christianity … was attacked on all sides and for all contradictory reasons.  No sooner had one naturalist demonstrated that it was too far to the east than another demonstrated with equal clearness that it was much too far to the west (285) … 

‘Insincere pessimism is a social accomplishment … and fortunately nearly all pessimism is insincere (285) …’ from Chesterton’s perspective.  ‘… But the extraordinary thing is this.  [The pessimists] did prove to me in Chapter 1 
(to my complete satisfaction) that Christianity was too pessimistic; and then, 
in Chapter 2, they began to prove to me that is was a great deal too optimistic … This puzzled me; the charges seemed inconsistent (285) … 

Ironically, Chesterton does attest to one ‘objection to the Christian religion’, 
as he states this (287), ‘… simply that it is one religion … I was duly impressed with … the doctrine that there is one great unconscious church of all humanity founded on the omnipresence of the human conscience.  
Creeds, it was said, divided man; but at least morals united them.  The soul might seek the strongest and most remote lands and ages and still find essential ethical common sense … I believed this doctrine of the brotherhood of all men in the possession of a moral sense, and I believe it still – with other things … But then I found … that the very people who said that mankind was one church, from Plato to Emerson, were the very people who said that morality had changed altogether, and that what was right in one age was wrong in another (287) … The modern man found the church too simple exactly where the modern life was too complex; he found the church too gorgeous exactly where modern life is too dingy (289) …’ 

Throughout all these exigencies, Christianity was not purely a creed or doctrine of moderation in itself.  

‘Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite true that Christianity was merely sensible and stood in the middle.  There was an element in it of emphasis and even frenzy … I began more and more to think that it was wise, but it was not merely worldly wise; it was not merely temperate and respectable … The idea was that which I had outlined touching the optimist and the pessimist; that we want no an amalgam or compromise, but both things at the top of their energy; love an wrath both burning.  Here I shall only trace it in relation to ethics (290) … 

‘All sane men can see that sanity is some kind of equilibrium (290) … 
But granted that we have all to keep a balance, the real interest comes in with the question of how that balance can be kept … Paganism declared that virtue was in balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict:  the collusion of two passions apparently opposite.  Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously … And now I began to find that this duplex passion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere.  Everywhere the creed made a moderation out of the still crash of two impetuous emotions (291) … 

‘Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland … 
[But] All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view of his whole destiny – all that was to go … When one came to think of ‘one’s self’, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak abnegation and bitter truth … There was an open playground for the happy pessimist.  Let him say anything against himself short of blaspheming the original aim of his being … [but] He must not say that man … can be valueless (292) …’ which almost infers Nietzsche possible ventured too far in this ilk, for instance. 

‘… Here again, in short, Christianity got over the difficulty of combining opposites, by keeping them both, an keeping them both furious (292) … 
And the more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild (292) … 

‘Mental and emotional liberty are not so simple as they look.  
Really they require almost as careful a balance of laws and conditions as do social and political liberty … What we want is not the universality that is outside all normal sentiments; we want the universality that is inside all normal sentiments … ‘This’ was the achievement of this Christian paradox of parallel passions … The criminal we must forgive seventy times seven.  The crime we must not forgive at all (293) …’  

Moreover, the vital insight will be noted here that the ‘paradox’ is ‘parallel’, forming a common entity, as such.  It does not consist of polarised, contradictory or competitive elements as discerned and considered ultimately.  Whereas, this wasn’t how it appeared from peremptory perusal. 

Difference(s) were addressed through the context of Christianity through accommodation:  ‘… defining its main doctrine, the Church not only kept seemingly inconsistent things side by side, but, what was more, allowed them to break out as a sort of artistic violence (294) …’  Yet,   ‘… This heroic and monumental manner in ethics has entirely vanished with supernatural religion (294) … 

‘… [The] Church … hates that combination of two colours which is the feeble expedient of the philosophers.  It hates the evolution of black into white … 
In fact, the whole theory of the Church on virginity might be symbolised in the statement that white is a colour:  not merely the absence of colour … Christianity sought in most of these cases to keep the colours co-existent but pure.  It is not a mixture (294) …’  

Rather more a blend, would be my contention, and way of putting this. 

‘… There must be ‘some’ good in the life of battle, for so many good men have enjoyed being soldiers.  There must be ‘some’ good in the idea of non-resistance, for so many good men seem to enjoy being Quakers.  All that the Church did … was to prevent either of these good things from ousting the other.  They existed side by side … ‘That’ is the problem the Church attempted, that is the miracle she achieved (295) …’ 

There is a deep spirit of equanimity inherent here, which Chesterton associates with the state of ‘Christian Europe’ then: ‘… the instinct of Christian Europe says, ‘Let the German remain slow and reverent, that the Frenchman may the more safely be swift and experimental.  We will make an equipoise out of these excesses.  The absurdity called Germany shall correct the insanity called France (296) …’ 

An ‘irregular equilibrium’ in this was vital.  

‘Once let one idea become less powerful and some other idea would become too powerful (296) …’ 

However, the ideological momentum then seemed to inherently veer in favour of the perceived validity of orthodoxy, from Chesterton’s perspective.  

‘… Doctrines had to be defined within strict limits, even in order that man might enjoy general human liberties … There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy.  It was sanity … It was … equilibrium … 
The Church … swerved to left and right, so as exactly to avoid enormous obstacles … The orthodox Church was never respectable (297) …’ 

‘The universal self’ – mediating rationality through intuition

Chesterton proceeds to justify and validate the place of orthodoxy through a reflection on everyday life then in The Romance of Orthodoxy (Orthodoxy).  

‘It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch.  But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle … There would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people were simply walking about.  Our world would be more silent if it were more strenuous (298) …’ 

However, there is a clear anomaly here for contemporary times in that advanced transportation enables people to do more in their lives, which are now highly geared, exacting and stressed, rather than ‘reposed’. 

Chesterton continues with a much more pertinent contemporary observation.  

‘… Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought.  Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable (298) …’  

Accordingly, Chesterton complains of ‘… long word(s) … used in different connections to mean quite different things … the word ‘idealist’ has one meaning as a piece of philosophy and quite another as a piece of moral rhetoric …’ (298-299).  

However, every word or term means something at least somewhat ‘different’ in every ‘connection’, or context, basically because every context is different ! 

Indeed, Chesterton himself actually gives a most valid and pertinent instance of how this works out.  

‘… In actual modern Europe a free-thinker does not mean a man who thinks for himself.  It means a man who, having thought for himself, has come to one particular class of conclusions, the material origin of phenomena, 
the impossibility of miracles, the improbability of personal immortality and so on.  And none of these ideas are particularly liberal (299) …’ 

Whereas,  ‘… There is only one thing that can never go past a certain point in its alliance with oppression – and that is orthodoxy.  I may, it is true, 
twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a tyrant.  But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely (299) …’ 

However, either way, the tyrant gets to be justified, which seems to implicate the excesses of either perspective of the ‘doctrine’, or ideology, in question. 

Chesterton was alert to the empty materialism of conventional perspectives during the age of his early years.  

‘… Tennyson, a very typical nineteenth century man, uttered one of the instinctive truisms of his contemporaries when he said that there was faith in their honest doubt.  There was indeed … a deep and sincere faith in the inexorable routine of the cosmos [which didn’t allow the possibility of miracles] (300) …’ 

Yet, paradoxically or ironically, there is a strange proximity to materialism in Chesterton’s perspective of mind over matter.  

‘… Reform or (in the only tolerable sense) progress means simply the gradual control of matter over mind (300) … A miracle only means the liberty of God … The Catholic Church believed that man and God both had a sort of spiritual freedom.  Calvinism took away the freedom of man and left it to God … If a man … can believe in miracles, he is certainly the more liberal for doing so; because they mean first, the freedom of the soul, and secondly, 
its control over the tyranny of circumstance (301) …’ 

Soon thereafter, Chesterton considers the doctrine of ‘the universal self’ (303).  

‘… It is the doctrine that we are really all one person, that there are no real walls of individuality between man and man (303) …’  

Conversely, Chesterton interposes:  
‘… I want to adore the world, not as one likes a looking-glass because it is one’s self, but as one loves a woman, because she is entirely different (304) … 

‘Christianity is on the side of humanity and liberty and love.  
Love desires personality; therefore love desires division.  It is the instinct of Christianity to be glad that God has broken the universe into little pieces, because they are living pieces.  It is her instinct to say ‘little children love one another rather than tell one large person to love himself … for the Buddhist or Theosophist personality is the fall of man, for the Christian it is the purpose of God, the whole point of his cosmic idea … No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls … That a man may love God it is necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved, but a man to love him (304) …’ 

‘The Christian saint is happy because he has verily been cut off from the world; he is separate from things and is staring at them in astonishment (305) …’ 

How Chesterton considered this situation was that the element of individuation in Christianity became the essence of the social intervention which ensued.  

‘… The truth is that the western energy that dethrones tyrants has been directly due to the western theology that says ‘I am I, thou art thou’ (305) …’ 

However, perhaps we are becoming so estranged from whom we really are as individuals – our authentic identity, as such – that the ‘tyrants’ are beginning to return.  This would mean that perhaps we may need to be more ‘watchful’ and reflective in this, in the deepest sense.  

‘… That external vigilance which has always been the mark of Christianity 
(the command that we should ‘watch’ and pray) has expressed itself both in typical western orthodoxy and in typical western politics; but both depend on the idea of a divinity transcendent, different from ourselves, a deity that disappears … If we want reform, we must adhere to orthodoxy … 
Insisting that God is inside man, man is always inside himself.  By insisting that God transcends man, man has transcended himself … The ‘heart’ of humanity, especially of European humanity, is certainly much more satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that gather round the Trinitarian idea, 
the image of a council at which mercy pleads as well as justice, the conception of a sort of liberty and variety existing even in the inmost chamber of the world.  For Western religion has always felt keenly the idea ‘it is not well for man to be alone’ (306) … Suffice it to say that this triple enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an English fireside; that this thing that bewilders the intellect quiets the heart (307) …’ 

Vulnerability and fragility, rather than polarity and competitiveness, would be our touchstones in this, for Chesterton.  

‘Our fighting and creative society ought rather to insist on the danger of everybody, on the fact that every man is hanging by a thread or clinging to a precipice … To the Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a science or a plan which must end up in a certain way.  But to a Christian existence is a ‘story’, which may end up in any way … So Christian morals have always said to the man, not that he would lose his soul, but that he must take care that he didn’t (307) …’ 

It becomes evident the intuitive spontaneous element of experience is vital from this perspective.  ‘All Christianity concentrates on the man at the 
cross-roads … The true philosophy is concerned with the instant.  Will a man take this road or that?  That is the only thing to think about, if you enjoy thinking.  The eons are easy enough to think about, anyone can think about them (307) …’ 

However, failure to consider, say, the context of history, can be diabolical.  Context is crucial to the cultivation of substance, significance and relevance.  The critical resonance of context soon becomes evident.  

‘… There is a great deal of real similarity between popular fiction and the religion of Western people … Life (according to faith) is very like a serial story in a magazine:  life ends with the promise (or menace) to be continued in our next (307) …’ 

Correspondingly, personal will enables autonomy and agency, 
which thereby serves to mediate rationality.  

‘… But the point is that a story is exciting because it has in it so strong and element of will, of what theology calls free-will.  You cannot finish a sum how you like.  But you can finish a story how you like … All moral reform must start in the active not the passive will … Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete … Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator (308) … It is written, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord they God’.  No; but the Lord they God may tempt Himself, and it seems as if this is what happened in Gethsemene … 

‘These can be called the essential of the old orthodoxy, of which the chief merit is that it is the natural formation of revolution and reform; and of which the chief deficit is that it is obviously only an abstract assertion (309) … 
Its opponents … do not destroy orthodoxy; they only destroy political courage and common sense … Not only is the faith the mother of all worldly energies, but its foes are the fathers of all worldly confusion (310) …’ 

According to Chesterton, in Authority and the Adventurer (Orthodoxy): 
‘… orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, but is also the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance … If we want to uproot inherent cultures or lift up lost populations we cannot do it with the scientific theory that matter precedes mind;  we can do with that supernatural theory that mind precedes matter … Above all, if we wish to protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed rules and clear dogmas (311) … 

‘But even supposing … [orthodox] doctrines do include [these] truths, 
why cannot you take the truths, and leave the doctrines?  The first answer is simply to say that I am a rationalist.  I like to have some intellectual justification for my intuitions.  If I am treating man as a fallen being it is an intellectual convenience to me to believe that he fell, and I find for some odd psychological reason, that I can deal better with a man’s exercise of freewill if I believe that he has got it.  But I am in this matter yet more definitely a rationalist (311) …’  

This really constitutes a confession from Chesterton which is indicative of his essential character and nature, I believe.  The implication seems to be that intuition is not a spontaneous quality or attribute for him, in which case it would not derive naturally through Providence, but rather would be invoked by him.  This is why the ‘intellectual justification’ he seeks, as a source of reliance, would be so vital for him, for this would derive from, and be proportionate to, his own reasoning, enabling him to order and control his rationality.  Then such ordered rationality would form the basis of his orthodoxy, thereby positioned in contra-distinction to the very libertarian qualities he favours and invokes.  There is surely much more than paradox in this.  It is as if Chesterton is not able to find a way through which to blend and accommodate the contradiction through suitable authentic equanimity.  

Indeed, Chesterton himself attests to this anomaly, in this sense, as he refers to the significance of Catholicism.  ‘… Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground …’ (314) 

Meanwhile, Chesterton reveals a somewhat superior, even arrogant, perspective of the place of the human entity.  

‘… Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours.  They have, indeed, a civilisation; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilisation.  Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? (313) …’ 

Yet, of course, who are we to arrogantly presume what constitutes the nature of ant civilisation, and what system of heritage and identity applies to their life realm. 

Ultimately, however, it is clear Chesterton perceives and appreciates the true nature and essence of paradox through his cogent consistent analysis 
– that paradox is not about contra-distinction and/or contradiction, but rather ‘synthesis’. 

‘… Here we must remember the difficult definition of Christianity already give; Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other.  The one explanation of the Gospel language that does explain it, is that it is the survey of one who from some supernatural height beholds some more startling synthesis (315) …’ 

Yet Chesterton further reveals his derision of ‘intuition’ by relegating it to the place of a raw emotion, rather than linked with ‘intellectual conviction’: 
‘… my own personal conviction [is] that personal creation is more conceivable than material fate … I will not call it a faith or an intuition, for those words [not even an entity with any agency] are mixed up with mere emotions, it is strictly an intellectual conviction; but it is a ‘primary’ intellectual conviction like the continuity of self of the good of living (318) …’  Well, this is how it is for him; but how can he presume this position to be valid for everyone or anyone? 

Ultimately, Chesterton emphasises the importance of having ‘a ground of belief’ as the basis for ‘apologetics’ (321).  

Further, he proposes: 
‘… I have another far more solid and central ground for submitting to [this] as a faith, instead of merely picking up hints from it as a scheme … Plato has told you a truth; but Plato is dead … But imagine what it would be to live with such [a man] still living, to know that Plato might break out with an original lecture tomorrow (321) … The man who lives in contact with what he believes to be a living Church is a man always expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare tomorrow at breakfast.  He is always expecting to see some truth that he has never seen before (321-322) …’ 

Then Chesterton invokes perhaps the most elemental metaphor of authority:  ‘… you believed your father, because you had found him to be a living foundation of facts, a thing that really knew more than you; a thing that would tell you truth tomorrow, as well as today … A mere unmeaning wildness is not even impressive.  But the garden of childhood was fascinating, exactly because everything had a fixed meaning which could be found out in its turn … So, since I have accepted Christendom … I have found Europe and the world once more like the little garden [of childhood] (322) …’ 

Chesterton asserts of Christianity:  
‘… All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true.  Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden … Orthodoxy makes us jump by the sudden bring of hell; … It is only afterwards that we realise that this danger is the root of all drama and romance (323) …’  The ‘despair’ of ‘modern philosophy’ is ‘… that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe; therefore it cannot hope to find any romance; 
its romances will have no plots.  A man cannot expect any adventures in the land of anarchy.  But a man can expect any number of adventures if he goes travelling in the land of authority.  One can find no meanings in a jungle of scepticism; but the man will find more and more meanings who walks through a forest of doctrine and design.  Here everything has a story tied to its tail (324) … 

‘… The primary paradox of Christianity is that the ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that the normal itself is an abnormality … This is the prime paradox of our religion; something that we have never in any full sense known, is not only better than ourselves, but even more rational to us than ourselves (324) …’ 

The Man Who Was Thursday

As the great altercation between the two prominent poets of bohemian Saffron Park, Syme and Gregory, moves into intensity, the terms of their positions are ponderously hammered out in The Man Who Was Thursday. 

Syme is for law and order – ‘a poet of respectability’ (3).  
He is a convinced adherent of ‘convention’.  For him ‘the most poetical thing in the world’ is ‘the Underground Railway’ (3).  

Whereas for Gregory the predictability of mundane reality is a tiresome prospect, for Syme ‘things going right … is the foundation of all poetry’ (5).  ‘Revolt in the abstract is – revolting’, for Syme (5).

Gregory is ‘very rational when anyone else attempt[s] paradox’ (4).  Nevertheless, Syme reassures Gregory of his integrity in this.  ‘I have never doubted that you were perfectly sincere … that you thought what you said well worth saying, that you thought a paradox might wake men up to a neglected truth’ (8). 

But, does Syme think him ‘serious … in a deeper sense’? (8) 
then becomes Gregory’s challenge and conundrum.  

Essentially, this becomes a matter of whether or not Gregory is considered to be earnest in his convictions by Syme. 

Then, as they proceed with their adventure, Syme seems to consider Gregory as somewhat elusive in nature, as Syme intimates it is appropriate for 
‘a man … [to] keep something in the background of his life that is more serious than all this talking’ (8). 

Yet when Rosamund Gregory, the poet’s sister, seeks such earnest authenticity from Syme – ‘Do you mean what you say now?’ (5), he could only reply to the effect that people only ever discern and distinguish part of the truth in what they say or mean.  They don’t really ‘mean’ … the ‘thank you’ they say when someone passes them the salt (5).  But, don’t they, really?  And how does Syme know this?  How can he know this for anyone else but himself? 

Once it is clear to Syme what is the nature of Gregory’s motives and intentions as an anarchist, the substantive project of the revolutionaries becomes lucidly apparent.  Gregory wants ‘… to abolish God’ (13), to abolish ‘Right and Wrong’, while Syme would have him abolish ‘Right and Left’ also (13).  

Gregory is exultant in all this through the force of a Nietzschean-like stridency against ‘Nature’ (14).  He harbours no respect or regard for sentiment, 
as embodied through the ‘silly sentimentalists of the French Revolution’ (13).  Yet he confesses to Syme what is his intuitive spontaneous propensity to bring Syme covertly to the meeting rooms of the New Anarchists.  ‘… Now no human words can give you any notion why I brought you here.  It was one of those quite arbitrary emotions, like jumping off a cliff, or falling in love (12) …’ confesses Gregory … And so the paradox deepens ! 

Consistent with the twists of fortune which characterise the allegiances of Gregory and Syme, Gregory turns out to be an anarchist of sentiment, sensitivity and sensibility, despite his ruddy imposing demeanour.  He likens the situation of the anarchists to that of the early Christians confined to the Catacombs ([caves] 20), and the ‘Anarchists of Europe’ as a society ‘founded upon love’ and resolved to pursue ‘permanent ideals of brotherhood and simplicity’ with ‘moral courage and quiet intellectual pressure’ (21).  
Whereas, the sartorially elegant Syme denounces this perspective as ‘maudliin mercy’ (22), as it is put to the Supreme Council of Anarchy by Gregory.   

Then, as they survey perplexed the desperate apparent controversy which is the basis of their grave polarity, Syme observes:  ‘… Perhaps we are both doing what we think right.  But what we think right is so damned different that there can be nothing between us in the way of concession.  There is nothing possible between us but honour and death …’ (25) 

The twisted paradox of allegiances becomes progressively complex when it is realised that Syme is not just ‘… a detective who pretended to be a poet; 
he was really a poet who had become a detective’ (26).  Syme came from a family in which extreme polarity and diversity in allegiances already epitomised his antecedents.  Back then, he regarded the prevalent public apathy as a ‘deluge of barbaric denial’ (27) and inveighed against it accordingly while ‘Government stood along and desperate, it back to the wall (27).  He then happened to unload the spirit of his frustrations to a policeman on the beat one night, to which the policeman counselled that his ‘calm’ demeanour was ‘the calm of organised resistance’ (27).  

As the paradox of the situation slides inexorably around itself, the policeman turns out to be a Harrow educated member of the elite corps of police dedicated to distilling rather ‘… the aberrations of the scientific intellect than being preoccupied with the normal and excusable, though excessive, outbreaks of human will’ (28).  His head of department fears ‘a purely intellectual conspiracy would soon threaten the very existence of civilisation … in a crusade against the Family and the State (28) …
’A ‘democrat’ himself, the policeman is ‘… fully aware of the value of the ordinary man in matters of ordinary valour and virtue’ (29).  So the work of the police becomes ‘at once bolder and more subtle’ (29), extending to deciphering obscure code metaphors in poetry. 

Hence members of this branch of the police have come to ‘… deny the snobbish English assumption that the uneducated are the dangerous criminals’ (29), rather ‘the most dangerous criminal now is the entirely lawless modern philosopher’ (29).  Consequently, ‘… philosophers hate life itself, 
their own as much as other people’s’ (30).  Syme agrees, attesting that 
‘… the evil philosopher is not trying to alter things, but to annihilate them’ (30).  Yet he knows these ‘lawless little men and mad little movements’ at least have ‘the one merit of disagreeing with each other’ (30) – paradoxically they collectively represent the substance and bulwark of democracy.  
This contingency is happily catered for through ‘the outer ring’ of the New Detective Corps – ‘men who believe that rules and formulas have destroyed human happiness’ (31).  So Syme became the latest recruit in the special police activity code-named ‘The Last Crusade’ and distinguished as ‘the battle of Armageddon’ (32). 

Paradox bends around ideas and ideals in regular continuity, as Chesterton reveals the phenomenon of emaciated whimsical notions which are alleged to form the basis of the vague existential ideologies of the time.  Syme is told by an accomplice of the President’s latest notion: ‘… for his notions grow like a tropical forest.  So in case you don’t know, I’d better tell you that he is carrying out his notion of concealing ourselves by not concealing ourselves to the most extraordinary lengths just now (36) …’ 

Envisaged as a characteristic element of paradox is the reality that, during the breakfast of the ‘European Dynamiters’ in the continental ambience of Leicester Square, Syme ‘… began to see in each of them … a demoniac detail somewhere …’ (40) 

‘… The sense of an unnatural symbolism always settled back in him again.  Each figure seemed to be, somehow, on the borderland of things, just as their theory was on the borderland of thought.  He knew that each one of these men stood at the extreme end, so to speak, of some old-world fable, that if a man went westward to the end of the world he would find something – say a tree that was more or less than a tree, a tree possessed by a spirit … 
So these figures seemed to stand up, violent, and unaccountable against an ultimate horizon, visions from the verge.  The ends of the earth were closing in …’ (43) 

Shades of Nietzsche then seem to be evoked through the narrator’s descriptive analysis of the Council President, ‘Sunday’.  ‘… Many moderns, inured to a weak worship of intellect and force, might have wavered in their allegiance under this oppression of a great personality.  They might have called Sunday the super-man … He might have been called something above man, with his large plans, which were too obvious to be detected, with his large face, which was too frank to be understood …’ (45) 

Yet, later, Syme feels a strange sense of being able to emerge as equal to the President from the comparatively uplifting context of ‘the commonplace’ (47): ‘… he did feel himself as the ambassador of all these common and kindly people in the street, who every day marched into battle to the music of the barrel-organ … For an instant, at least, he looked down upon all the … sprawling eccentricities from the starry pinnacle of …’ the commonplace (47). 

Through the character of Syme, Chesterton then explores some of the intricate facets of truth and reality at the forefront of the socio-ethical context in these volatile times from intellectual and moral perspectives.  
When confronted with the unlikely challenge of his being ‘a policeman’, through a deep parody of standard evolutionary theory, Syme responds:  
‘But perhaps I misunderstood the delicacies of your German philosophy.  Perhaps policeman is a relative term.  In an evolutionary sense, sir, the ape fades so gradually into the policeman that might have been.  I don’t mind being the policeman I might have been.  I don’t mind being anything in German thought …’ (59), which also appears loosely as a parody of the Nietzschean doctrine of perpetual recurrence – in this instance the recurrence of what is willed by a person. 

Chesterton, through the ‘celebrated Professor’ who mounts this challenge, also juggles with the perspective of conventional realism as actually a replication of the deeper reality, or constituting what would now be considered a deconstruction of reality, through the initiative of the Professor to become more real than his namesake – the actual Professor de Worms, ‘the German nihilist philosopher’ ! (66)  ‘Gogol [a discredited dynamiter] was an idealist.  He made up the abstract or platonic ideal of an anarchist.  But I am a realist.  
I am a portrait painter.  But, indeed, to say that I am a portrait painter is an inadequate expression.  I am a portrait … I am a portrait of the celebrated Professor de Worms …’ (65) asserted the Professor. 

As the paradox of their adventure thereby inevitably deepens in complexity, Syme recognises logic and reason twisting inexorably in an evidently greater sense as this becomes the more entrenched fabric of the experience and existence of the anarchists.  ‘… Syme was increasingly conscious that his new adventure had somehow a quality of cold sanity worse than the wild adventures of the past.  Last night, for instance, the tall tenements had seemed to him like a tower in a dream … Their infinity was more like the empty infinity of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet necessary to thought.  [It could be said, indeed, like a ‘paradox’, from my perspective! – my bracket]  Or it was like the stunning statements of astronomy about the distance of the fixed stars.  He was ascending the house of reason, a thing more hideous than unreason itself.’ (72) 

Then, amid all this, Syme comes up with the quintessential element missing from this cold emphasis on reason:  ‘I have an intuition.’ (75) !  

As a poet, he asserts his claim to spontaneous interception and intervention in these confounded proceedings so far.  While, as an authentic intuition, 
this has the quality of ‘a sort of light-headed certainty’ (75).  The Professor, 
in inimitably reason-based and driven adamacy, chooses to ignore his intuition, until Syme can bear this no longer, and so boldly intervenes, as all intuitive idealists must eventually (75-76).  

Later, Chesterton links Syme’s penchant and quality of intuition with the proficiency of ‘common sense’, through this continuous elaboration and application of paradoxical elements.  ‘Syme was subject to spasms of singular common sense, not otherwise a part of his character.  They were … poetic intuitions, and they sometimes rose to the exaltation of prophecy.’ (85) 

In this later case, Syme discerns appropriately how the Marquis de Saint Eustache, whom he is about to encounter in a duel, will arrange proceedings to take the train to Paris to dynamite the Czar and the French President. 

When the fated duel ultimately proceeds, Chesterton reveals the vital renewal of deep sensitivity and sentiment, reflection and appreciation, as vibrant qualities amid all the complexity and confusion of life circumstances.  

‘He [Syme] felt a strange and vivid value in all the earth around him, in the grass under his feet; he felt the love of all things.  He could almost fancy that he heard the grass growing (87) … He had the feeling that if by some miracle he escaped [by being successful in the duel] he would be ready to sit for ever before that almond tree [in the distance before him, which consoled him, 
as such an idyllic sight amid this mad frenzy], desiring nothing else in the world (88).’ 

Eventually, the Marquis springs back during the high intensity of the duel to reveal his disguise.  It is clear he is yet another of the police officer spies on the Anarchist Council.  Dr Bull explains the situation to the opposing seconds through an insight which serves as something of a chilling metaphor, reminiscent of the actual European geopolitical situation then.   

‘… We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.  A secret society of anarchists is hunting us like hares; not such unfortunate madmen as may here or there throw a bomb through starvation or German philosophy, but a rich and powerful and fanatical church 
… which holds it holy to destroy mankind like vermin.  How hard they hunt us you can gather from the fact that we are driven to such disguises as this one by which you suffer.’ (92) 

The Supreme Anarchist Council commander and President, Sunday, 
had connivingly ‘… put all his powerful enemies on the Supreme Council’, thence to ‘take care that it was not supreme’ (93).  Correspondingly, in this farcical situation, Syme came to realise the implications of this whole mad maelstrom of sporadic developments.  

‘… Was there anything that was apart from what it seemed? … 
Was not everything, after all, like this bewildering woodland, this dance of dark and light?  Everything only a glimpse, the glimpse always unforseen, 
and always forgotten.  For Gabriel Syme had found in the heart of that 
sun-splashed wood what many modern painters had found there.  He had found the thing which the modern people call Impressionism, which is another name for the final scepticism which can find no floor to the universe …’ (96-97) 

Soon, Ratcliffe clarified the situation for Syme, at least from his perspective.  ‘… You’ve got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor.  Why should it?  The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists:  they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government … The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all.  Aristocrats were always anarchists, as you can see from the barons’ wars …’ (97)  Ratcliffe concluded his anlaysis by pointing out that ‘… most of old Sunday’s right-hand men are millionaires’ who enabled him to control 
world-wide utilities, institutions and communications systems’ (97).  

Hence, as always, the supreme element of paradox prevails.  

Chased by a crowd of ‘Sunday’ sympathisers, and presumable anarchists through the French countryside, they stop off at the home of Dr Renard to borrow his ‘motor car’.  He apparently and predictably finds their plight quite farcical.  ‘I have a suspicion that you are all mad … but God forbid that madness should in any way interrupt friendship.  Let us go round to the garage …’ (105)  

Yet, later, despite the lending his car to the noble fugitives, Dr Renard is found to urging on a vast horde of ordinary French townsfolk in pursuit of this beleagured crew. 

Dr Bull’s response to this development is to declare:  
‘… I don’t think, and I never shall think, that the mass of ordinary men are a pack of dirty modern thinkers.  No, sir, I’m a democrat …’ (110)  

Accordingly, Syme responds:  
‘You are a very fine fellow … You can believe in a sanity which is not merely your sanity.  And you’re right enough about humanity … But you’re not right about Renard.  I suspected him from the first.  He’s rationalistic, and what’s worse, he’s rich.  When duty and religion are really destroyed, it will be by the rich.’ (110) 

When there is an ultimate confrontation after this long chase, Syme hurls forward the lantern he holds, with a cross effigy inside, and declares to the throng of townsfolk:  ‘… There is not a street that you walk on, there is not a thread you wear, that was not made as this lantern was, by denying your philosophy of dirt and rats.  You can make nothing.  You can only destroy.  You will destroy mankind; you will destroy the world.  Let that suffice you.  
Yet this one old Christian lantern you shall not destroy.  It shall go where your empire of apes will never have the wit to find it.’ (115)  

Most ironically, and paradoxically, it was Dr Renard who gave the lamp to the fugitives to assist them in their bid for sanctuary !  Then, in supreme utilitarian lunacy, the ‘Secretary’, who leads the throng, attempts to arrest Syme and his accomplices, revealing himself, as they duly reveal to him, 
they are all policemen acting as spies on the Supreme Anarchist Council. 

The now united members of the constabulary return to London to confront Sunday.  

‘We have come to know what all this means.  Who are you?  What are you?  Why did you get us all here?  Do you know who and what we are?’ (119) 
is the Secretary’s desperate plea to Sunday on behalf of the group.  
But Sunday escapes, in dastardly fashion, to lead them on a merry chase to no avail, until they come to a time of deep pensive poignant reflection, 
during which they each share their testimonies about Sunday. 

‘Have you noticed an odd thing … about all our descriptions?  
Each man of you finds Sunday quite different, yet each man of you can only find one thing to compare him to – the universe itself,’ Syme eventually observes (130). 

Then Chesterton, through Syme, shows how the affliction of a 
mono-dimensional perspective, rather than richly paradoxical one, turns out to be the malady of all humanity.  

‘Listen to me … Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world?  
It is that we have only known the back of the world.  We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal.  That is not a tree, but the back of a tree.  That is not a cloud, but the back of a cloud.  Cannot you see that everything is stooping and hiding a face? …’ (132)   

Ultimately, Sunday brings the seven followers together in a kind of Mardi gras festive celebration in their honour, with much colourful merriment and dancing.  

‘Every couple dancing seemed a separate romance; it might be a fairy dancing with a pillar-box, or a peasant girl dancing with the moon; but in each case it was, somehow, as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as grave and kind as a love story (139) …’ 

Then, when the festivities eventually abate, Sunday responds to the question of whom he was:  ‘I am the Sabbath … I am the peace of God.’ (140) 

The poet Gregory, who is present, offers a final desperate plea in defence of anarchy.  

‘… The only crime of the Government is that it governs.  
The unpardonable sin of the supreme power is that it is supreme …’ (142) 

Syme protests:  
‘No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 
‘We also have suffered’.’ (142) 

‘He had turned his eyes so as to see suddenly the great face of Sunday, which wore a strange smile:  ‘Have you,’ he cried in a dreadful voice, 
‘have you ever suffered?’ (142-143) …’  Syme, ‘… seemed to hear a distant voice saying a commonplace text that he had heard somewhere, 
‘Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?’ (143) …’ 

Then Syme ultimately emerges from what seems to be this dream. 

Perception of the potential prospect of deep friendship, even Love, through sustained appreciation and integrity, seems to pervade Syme’s closing realisation.  

‘… He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden.  There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.’ (143)  

Conclusion 

Morality and motives: 

blended experience – continuity, equilibrium and equanimity

Morality is the primary source of continuity in being, existence and experience for Chesterton.  This vital element becomes manifest through the greater spontaneous experiential realisation of experimental sublime surprise and ‘astonishment’.  Perhaps this is the ultimate paradox for him.  Yet this reality culminates in a deeply rich fine-grained form of experience in life which can be described essentially as complex. 

Life becomes a curiously blended experience through which basic fundamental truths form the deep rich ground of being, as I have explained this.  Yet the authority which substantiates such elemental truth is embedded in the diversity of paradox, even when considered from the perspective of broad ‘national’ cultural character.  So this affirmative credence of authority is actually grounded in, and manifested through, the ebullient spontaneity of a kind of relativity. 

Chesterton is insistent in his project to explore duality and polarity, and is careful not to shirk such perspectives.  Yet he resolutely pursues this in the context of his greater realisation of humanity.  While the abiding conundrum of paradox always seems to vitalise the superficially mundane elements of perspective, as Chesterton reveals through his seminal analysis of private and collective enterprise.  Broadly, he shows through the spirit of paradox the potential of dilemmas to dissipate social and personal equanimity. 

Moreover, Chesterton appreciates the great potential realisation that 
socio-communal transformation emanates from people collectively in intuitive solidarity, rather than through the unilateral intervention of a charismatic leader.  While true history is a reflective and reflexive enterprise 
– a ‘study of ‘the inside’ out’ as he puts this (110). 

The paradox of popular ideas, their derivation, elaboration, application and expression, is definitively implicit in Chesterton’s consideration of the place of particular forms of popular literature.  He explains how various forms of historical novels then provided insubstantial unreliable, and sometimes even farcical, accounts of the detail of history.  While, in reviewing certain aspects of Jane Austen’s work, Chesterton shows how the form of the aspect of the work – Emma, for instance – documents an implicit trajectory, teleology and continuity in historical socio-communal development.  Such works must therefore be considered as distinctive contributions in this respect. 

Populist observations on the situation of women (1920) is a further source of analysis for Chesterton. 

The problem Chesterton addresses in the context of popular imagination is that of the respective perspectives which evolve in particular everyday contexts.  Given the resonant context of his own time it is the elemental reality of the domestic fireside and its facets, rather than necessarily the functionality of the fire, which becomes vital in the appreciation of humanity.  The ‘frame’ of the ‘hearth’ as a ‘place’ is the derivative perspective here, which allows him to refine his respect and appreciation of orthodoxy with effect and relevance in the then contemporary context.      

Basically, Chesterton attests to the importance of retaining the perplexity and continuity of actuality in the contemporary realm, and it is this which affirms for him his respect and appreciation of orthodoxy, and his insistence on this.  A ‘tree’ must be respected for its ‘treeishness’ – for its distinctive attributes, qualities and character – while it is vital for people to strive to retain and preserve these aspects in the socio-communal context of universal appreciation.  All environmentalists would no doubt concur – ‘Here! Here!’ 

Moreover, Chesterton’s earlier work exudes this same element of spontaneity in the context of continuity and preservation.  Small communities are considered more worthy than social agglomerations like cities, because in this context people are challenged even more emphatically to respect and appreciate the diversity of others … while in the family context – indeed, more so.  Yet insistence in perspective, as associated with Nietzsche and others, 
is discouraged as ‘unpardonable virtue’ by Chesterton (78-79).  The ‘supreme adventure’ is ‘being born’, not necessarily ‘falling in love’ ! (81).  While we are exhorted to be careful of so-called ‘opposites’.  The opposite of ‘funny’ is ‘not funny’, not ‘serious’ ! (86)  However, the optimal quality is to be earnest, 
from my perspective. 

Sagaciously, Chesterton believes in ‘Liberalism’, but not in ‘Liberals’.  
While ‘democracy’ means bringing ‘the most terribly important things … 
to ordinary men themselves’ (255), and ‘tradition’ means ‘giving votes to … her ancestors’ (256).  Paradoxically, as ever, ‘England is nothing but the sunny country of common sense’, and ‘fairy tales’ are ‘entirely reasonable things’ (256). 

Fairyland is ‘the test of the imagination’, not of ‘reason’ and/or ‘necessity’.  ‘Scientific men’ reason as if they have found ‘a law’ or a ‘generalisation and enactment’ which is effectively ‘a truth connecting … facts’ (258-259).  Through common sense, rationality, practicality and positivism, we ‘forget … who we really are’, but then revive our memory through spirit, art and ecstasy (260).  Life is ‘an ecstasy because it [is] an adventure … [and] opportunity’ (261).  It is ‘as precious as it [is] puzzling’ (261).  

‘Existence’ is a fragile ‘eccentric … legacy’ (262), which for Chesterton is why it is so difficult for Chesterton to empathise with the ‘sentiment of ‘revolt’ ‘ (263).  The ‘world is a weird and startling place … which is quite delightful’ (264).  Hence the repetitive element of Calvinism seems to constitute and essential abnormality for him.  The ‘exalted repetition’ of Nature may constitute an element much more profound than ‘mere recurrence’ (265).  ‘Facts’ are ‘miracles’ in that they are ‘wonderful’ and ‘wilful’ (265).  So there is a profound sense of Providence and providential beneficence in his appreciation. 

Chesterton’s broader notion of existence is that of a precious universal ‘cosmos’ (268).  This is what I would cite as his ground of being – ‘the soil for the seeds of doctrine’ (268) as he puts this.  This is his implied sense of personal meaning, significance and contribution.  It also constitutes the elements of a sense of belonging – ‘loyalty long before … admiration’ (270). 

However, in preference to Chesterton’s ‘cosmic patriot[s]’ (277), my sense is that people are universal citizens, which suitably embraces our more expansive values and realisation of interpersonal responsibility with autonomy, and what I consider to be mutual maturity. 

Morality and ethics are effectively acquired, rather than isolated, codified and gravitated towards, as if to a magnet.  This is essentially a messy, exploratory, universal process. 

‘Motive’, not just ‘emotion’ (272-273), is vital for Chesterton in this context, just as motives are for me. 

Moreover, what I call ‘Deep Friendship’ is a prerequisite of deep Love.  While, as Chesterton asserts, ‘Love is not blind … Love is bound’ (274). 

Whatever is a person’s ‘theory of things’ ultimately constitutes their ‘belief’ (277), according to Chesterton.  While, as basically consisting of ‘the answer to a riddle’, Christianity is not ‘altruism’ (277, 278).  Rather, Christianity is 
‘born of conflict’ (279).  It began as a religion through which its followers split off from the world, and so did not ‘fit in’ (281), which engendered profound implications for how a person situates themselves and establishes 
their place in life. 

Meanwhile, life is nearly reasonable, ‘but not quite’, for Chesterton – 
‘its wildness lies in wait’ (282).  Hence we have come to expect an inherent duplicity in life.  Alternatively, Chesterton maintains ‘it is a compliment’ that a ‘creed … is elaborately right’ (283).  ‘The whole case for civilisation … 
is complex’ (284).  All of which serves to vindicate the criterion of consistency for credibility in this, for me.  This implies Christianity is not fundamentally a doctrine of moderation, although ‘sanity is some kind of equilibrium’ (290) 
for Chesterton. 

For the Christian, this meant dispensing with ‘a vague or mean view of [their] whole destiny’ (292).  A ‘balance of laws and conditions’ would render ‘mental and emotional liberty’ through the context of ‘normal sentiments’ (293).  Paradox remains a parallel phenomenon.  Something which resembles a parallel universe, perhaps ! 

Meanwhile, Christianity constitutes a potential blend of creeds, rather than a mixture, for me, which is consistent with Chesterton’s perspective.  There is a deep spirit of equanimity inherent in this perspective for me.  

Chesterton prefers the notion of equilibrium (297), but not on the pretext of what is necessarily ‘respectable’ (297).  Chesterton deplores the narrow use of terms in discourse, although conversely he implicitly then seems to stipulate usage which is appropriate (298-299).  Paradox seems to pervade even Chesterton’s very character.  Even though he is an averred critic of materialism, there is still a potentially materialist emphasis in his notion of ‘mind over matter’ (300).  For the mind ‘control[s]’ matter from this perspective.  So the application of a materialist perspective or otherwise here would depend on how the nature of mind is discerned and realised. 

When Chesterton raises his doctrine of ‘the universal self’ (303), he reveals his deep appreciation of diversity in the human context, sharing that he ‘adore[s] the world’ as with ‘a woman, because she is entirely different’ (304), whereas ‘a looking-glass … is [merely essentially] one’s self’ (304).  

If we want to retain who we really are as ‘individuals’ – what I term 
authentic identity – then it is vital for us to address what Chesterton calls our ‘estrangement’ from one another, from my perspective.  Otherwise, we are fragile in the face of tyranny.  For Chesterton, ‘If we want reform, we must adhere to orthodoxy’ (306). 

Existence is a ‘precipice’, or ‘thread’, but ‘Christian existence’ is an open ‘story’, Chesterton maintains (307).  Such a broad philosophy would be conducive to spontaneous intuition.  ‘The true philosophy is concerned with the instant.’ (307)  Moreover, context is crucial in all this, particularly the continuous context of history, especially its substance and significance, for me.  While it can be construed from Chesterton’s analysis that personal will mediates rationality through its inherent agency and autonomy. 

Yet, for Chesterton, intuition requires ‘some intellectual justification’ (311), which he links with ‘orthodoxy’ as ‘the only logical guardian of liberty, innovation and advance’ (311).  While he seems to be open in awareness and realisation in holding such a position, it seems an ordered rigid perspective potentially emanates here which can muddy the rich complexity of (inter)personal intuitive authenticity, as realised and appreciated through authentic equanimity. 

The true nature and essence of paradox is a ‘synthesis’ (315) for Chesterton, while intuition is a raw emotion, not a ‘conviction’ (318).  The ‘despair’ of ‘modern philosophy’ is ‘… that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe, therefore it cannot hope to find any romance’ (324).  While ‘a man can expect any number of adventures … in the land of authority’ (324). 

As essentially an adventure, the process of our life journey(s) which we refer to as ‘history’ clearly has a specific particular place, significance and meaning in the trajectory and continuity of universal endeavour.  Basically, we are all universal citizens, whether we relish this prospect or deplore it.  

Therefore the prospect of applying (inter)personal responsibility and mutual maturity in this process is vital.  Such an outcome would serve to affirm the crucial ‘synthesis’ which is paradox accepted and appreciated through a spirit of authentic equanimity. 

However, if we hope to retain the true ‘romance’ and ‘sentiment’ of our experiential adventure, then it is vital for us to distinctively contribute to the purpose, continuity and ontology of our history, thereby suitably situating our contribution(s) in its potential place, thence to establish and affirm this place accordingly. 

Only through such a process, or ‘synthesis’, can we pursue the often messy exploratory endeavour of intuiting and discerning morality and ethics from our motives and intent.  Thence we will remain well placed and/or situated to move through the ‘looking glass’, rather than necessarily beyond it ! … in a true spirit of deep friendship and Love.  For, the ‘world is a weird and startling place … which is quite delightful’ (264) !   

At the outset of The Man Who Was Thursday (1908), there are a couple of vital emergent principles.  These are the priority of a deep sense of earnest belief in dealing with the challenge and conundrum of existence; and that a sense of paradox can serve to elucidate ‘a neglected truth’ (8). 

Gregory turns out to be an anarchist of sentiment, sensitivity and sensibility in nature and character, although he eschews such attributes and discursive sense (21).  While for the elegant Syme, sentiment represents ‘maudlin mercy’! (22)

Soon Syme joins the ‘European dynamiters’ (40) and finds himself enjoying breakfast with them at Leicester Square.  He is emphatically aware of how they are ‘on the borderland of things’, while ‘their theory [is] on the borderland of thought’ (43).  Meanwhile, Syme becomes embued with a deep awareness and appreciation of ‘the commonplace’ (47) as a more beneficent context in all this. 

The element of paradox swirls, blends and folds around the myriad facets of the story.  The ‘Professor’ professes to be ‘a portrait’ (72) in himself, not an exponent of portraiture, as in some sense he is actually through his portrayal of another person.  

Meanwhile, Chesterton associates Syme’s penchant for intuition with the proficiency of ‘common sense’ and ‘cold sanity’ (75, 72). 

Deep sensitivity and sentiment, reflection and appreciation, epitomise the substantial qualities and/or attributes Chesterton, through Syme, seeks to invoke in this situation.  The effect of this entrenched paradoxical situation, along with its prevalent farcical circumstances, is to impair faith in reality, perception and perspective:  ‘Was there anything that was apart from what it seemed? … Was not everything … [merely] this dance of dark and light?  Everything only a glimpse …’ (96-96) 

Meanwhile,  ‘Aristocrats [are] always anarchists – the rich have always objected to being governed at all’ (97), Ratcliffe observes.  And so the juxtaposition of paradox blends into authentic reality ever more wildly, yet with rich distinctive diversity. 

Mono-dimensionality is the malady of humanity from this perspective.  Alternatively, romance serves to bring forward myriad associations 
‘… as absurd as Alice in Wonderland, yet as grave and kind as a love story’ (139), as Chesterton describes this experience through Syme. 

Syme concludes with the age-old lament of the oppressed and marginalised:  ‘No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 
‘We also have suffered’ (142). 

And so:  ‘Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?’ (143) 
 
REFERENCES

   
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith:	Heretics; 1905 [quoted on pp. 17-18]
       
				Orthodoxy; 1908 [quoted on pp. 19-36] – 
 
				The Bodley Head G K Chesterton
				Selected by P J Kavanagh
				Bodley Head, London, 1985.

				Chesterton’s Stories, Essays and Poems
				Dent, London, 1953.
				Selections quoted pp. 4-8 
				of this Seminar Paper.

				The Man Who Was Thursday – A Nightmare 
				Wordsworth Editions, London, 1995.
				First published in 1908.

				The Uses of Diversity – A Book of Essays 
				Methuen, London, 1920. 
				Selections quoted pp. 9-16
				of this Seminar Paper.

 Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought
				
			Alan Bullock, Oliver Stallybrass, Stephen Trombley (eds.)
 			Fontana, London, 1977, pp. 41, 626-627.  

			Quine, W V:  The Ways of Paradox, New York, 1966 
			Entry for ‘Antinomy’, p. 41
 
			Northrop, E P:  Riddles in Mathematics, London, 1945
			Entry for ‘Paradox’, pp. 626-627

 Chalmers Twentieth Century Dictionary, Edinburgh, 1977

		Entries for ‘Irony’ p.694;  ‘Paradox’ p.960;  ‘Parody’ p.966

Shorter Oxford Dictionary, London, 1980

		Entries for ‘Irony’ p.1113;  ‘Paradox’ p.1508;  ‘Parody’ p.1515