Summary
Heretics is a collection of essays by G.K. Chesterton written prior to World War 1. It is a defense of orthodoxy, not any particular orthodoxy but a defense of having explicit belief structures in the first place. This book is a polemic in the most fundamental sense. I use the word polemic carefully because, at least for me, the word carries a negative connotation. It brings with it ideas of narrow sightedness, or blindness. Chesterton would argue that the inverse is true. That any work that is not a polemic, has no vision to begin with, and therefore it is better to be narrow sighted than not to see at all. To put it succinctly and in Chesterton terms, the spirit of the modern age is one of negative definition, which at the end of the day is no definition. We can quickly point out where things go are wrong but have difficulty nailing down what things are “right”.
“We are fond of talking about ’liberty’; but the way we end up actually talking of it is an attempt to avoid discussing what is ‘good.’ We are fond of talking about ‘progress’; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. We are fond of talking about ’education’; that is a dodge to avoid discussing what is good. The modern man says, ‘Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace unadulterated liberty.’ This is, logically rendered, ‘Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.’ He says, ‘Away with your old moral standard; I am for progress.’ This, logically stated, means, ‘Let us not settle what is good; but let us settle whether we are getting more of it.’ He says, ‘Neither in religion nor morality, my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education.’ This, clearly expressed, means, ‘We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children.”
This type of negative definition removes ideals and replaces them with warnings. Chesterton feels the modern ethic can be encapsulated by a humanist’s observation that a picture of a drunkard’s liver would do more for temperance than any prayer or praise.
upon the altar to which all men kneel is no longer the perfect flesh, the body and substance of the perfect man; it is still flesh, but it is diseased. It is the drunkard’s liver of the New Testament that is marred for us, which we take in remembrance of him.
To put it in as stark as terms as possible, that I think Chesterton would agree with, it is better to have died a crusader than to have lived for nothing.
Thoughts
Chesterton is nothing if not a wordsmith, almost everything he wrote is quotable. You could read each paragraph or page out of context and not feel lost, in fact in some cases it might improve the experience. I also feel like this entire book was a personal attack as I am shot through with “modern” sensibilities. I found many of his criticisms to be well founded, and logical, while there were others that seemed flimsy. One thing I noticed was that he would say things so cleverly that they would seem correct just because they were so cleverly said, but when taken in context with his other ideas they appeared to be contradictory or not really saying anything at all. As one example, he has an essay on simple living where he criticizes the movement as coming from “high thinking” people who would be much better off by replacing “high thinking and plain living” with “plain thinking and high living”. This is of course a Chesterton paradox, because the next sentence might as well be followed by “what form of thinking is higher than plain thinking” or some other banality. For the most part though, I found his paradoxes to be useful, and he has many valuable observations. What was perhaps most singular about him was the joy that pervaded his book. You would think that a book that is essentially a takedown of people taking down things would be less “fun” to read, but you really get the sense that Chesterton was a jovial person who genuinely loved humanity. This informs his critique on Nietzsche which I thought was valuable, which was that Nietzsche’s super man is no man at all and it is this disdain of mankind that underlies all of Nietzsche’s work. I have much more I could say, but I think I’ve displayed enough ignorance for one day and will end with another quote.
Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the skepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed.