All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests
ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of
clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to
known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of
their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he
is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to
Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness
of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put
the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising.
A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit
fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grow-up person does it again until he
is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is
possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that
makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal
appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it
may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg.
Orthodoxy, first published in 1908, by G. K. Chesterton, is in the public domain, and available from Project Gutenberg. The previous post in this series is here.
Thanks for reading! Read Chesterton.
Musings on science, the Bible, and fantastic literature (and sometimes basketball and other stuff).
God speaks to us through the Bible and the findings of science, and we should listen to both types of revelation.
The title is from Psalm 84:11.
The Wikipedia is usually a pretty good reference. I mostly use the World English Bible (WEB), because it is public domain. I am grateful.
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The posts in this blog are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You can copy and use this material, as long as you aren't making money from it. If you give me credit, thanks. If not, OK.
Sunday, April 05, 2015
Excerpts from Orthodoxy, by Gilbert K. Chesterton, 17
Labels:
Chesterton,
daisies,
G. K. Chesterton,
materialism,
Orthodoxy,
regularity,
repetition
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