Latest / Catholic Church and Conversion / 005 - The World Inside Out

Transcript

005 - The World Inside Out · Catholic Church and Conversion

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Chapter four of The Catholic Church and Conversion. This is
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Read by Tatiana Chichilla, The Catholic Church and Conversion by G. K. Chesterton,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: The World inside Out. The first fallacy about the Catholic
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Church is the idea that it is a church. I
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: mean that it is a church in the sense in
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: which the nonconformist newspapers talk about the churches. I do
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: not intend any expression of contempt about the churches, nor
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: is it an expression of contempt to say that it
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: would be more convenient to call them the sects. This
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: is true in a much deeper and more sympathetic sense
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: than may at first appear. But to begin with, it
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: is certainly true in a perfectly plain and historical sense,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: which has nothing to do with sympathy at all. Thus,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: for instance, I have much more sympathy for small nationalities
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: than I have for small sects. But it is simply
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a historical fact that the Roman Empire was the empire,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: and that it was not a small nationality. And it
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: is simply a historical fact that the Roman Church is
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: the Church, not a sect. Nor is there anything narrow
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: or unreasonable in saying that the Church is the church.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: It may be a good thing that the Roman Empire
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: broke up into nations, but it certainly was not one
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: of the nations into which it broke up. And even
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a person who thinks it fortunate that the Church broke
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: up into sects ought to be able to distinguish between
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: the little things he likes and the big thing he
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: has broken. As a matter of fact, in the case
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: of things so large, so unique, and so creative of
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: the culture about them, as were the Roman Empire and
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: the Roman Church, it is not controversial, but simply correct
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: to confine the one word to the one example. Everybody
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: who originally used the word empire used it of that empire.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Everybody who used the word ecclesia used it of that ecclesia.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: There may have been similar things in other places, but
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: they could not be called by the same name, for
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the simple reason that they were not named in the
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: same language. We know what we mean by a Roman emperor.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: We can, if we like, talk of a Chinese emperor,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: just as we can, if we like take a particular
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: sword of a Mandarin, and say he is equivalent to
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: a marquis. But we never can be certain that he
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: is exactly equivalent, for the thing we are thinking about
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: is peculiar to our own history, and in that sense
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: stands alone. Now in that if in no other sense,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: the Catholic Church stands alone. It does not merely belong
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: to a class of Christian churches. It does not merely
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: belong to a class of human religions. Considered quite coldly
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: and impartially, as by a man from the moon, it
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: is much more sweet, generous than that. It is, if
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the critic chooses to think so, the ruin of an
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: attempt at a universal religion which was bound to fail.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: But calling the wreckers to break up a ship does
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: not turn the ship into one of its own timbers.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: And cutting Poland up into three pieces does not make
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Poland the same as Posin. But in a much more
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: profound and philosophical sense, this notion that the Church is
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: one of the sects is the great fallacy of the
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: whole affair. It is a matter more psychological and more
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: difficult to describe, but it is perhaps the most sensational
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: of the silent upheavals or reversals in the mind that
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: constitute the revolution called conversion. Every man conceives himself as
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: moving about in the cosmos of some kind, and the
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: man of the days of my youth walked about in
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: a kind of vast and airy crystal palace in which
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: there were exhibits set side by side. The cosmos, being
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: made of glass and iron, was partly transparent and partly colorless. Anyhow,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: there was something negative about it, arching over all our
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: heads a roof as remote as the sky. It seemed
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: to be impartial and impersonal. Our attention was fixed on
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: the exhibits, which were all carefully ticketed and arranged in rows,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: for it was the age of science. Here stood all
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: the religions in a row, the churches or sects or
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: whatever we called them. And towards the end of the
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: row there was a particularly dingy and dismal one with
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: a pointed roof half fallen in and pointed windows most
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: broken with stones by passers by, and we were told
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: that this particular exhibit was the Roman Catholic Church. Some
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: of us were sorry for it, and even fancied it
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: had been rather badly used. Most of us regarded it
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: as dirty and disreputable. A few of us even pointed
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: out that many details in the ruin were artistically beautiful
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: or architecturally important, but most people preferred to deal at
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: other and more businesslike booths at the Quaker's Shop of
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Peace and Plenty, or the Salvation Army Store where the
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: showman beats the big drum outside. Now, conversion consists very
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: largely on its intellectual side and the discovery that all
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: that picture of equal creeds inside in indifferent cosmos is
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: quite false. It is not a question of comparing the
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: merits and deficits of the Quaker meeting house set beside
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the Catholic Cathedral. It is the Quaker meeting house that
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: is inside the Catholic Cathedral. It is the Catholic Cathedral
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: that covers everything like the vault of the Crystal Palace.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: And it is when we look at the vast distant
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: dome covering all the exhibits, that we trace the Gothic
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: roof and the pointed windows. In other words, Quakerism is
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: but a temporary form of quietism which has arisen technically
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: outside the church, as the Quietism of Fenelon appeared technically
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: inside the Church. But both were in themselves temporary and
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: would have, like Fenelon, sooner or later, to return to
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: the Church in order to live the principle of life.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: And all these variations of Protestantism, insofar as it is
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: not a principle of death, consists of what remained in
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: them of Catholic Christendom, and to Catholic Christendom they have
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: always returned to be recharged with vitality. I know that
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: this will sound like a statement to be challenged, but
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: it is true. The return of Catholic ideas to the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: separated parts of Christendom was often indeed indirect, But though
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: the influence came through many centers, it always came from one.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: It came through the Romantic movement, a glimpse of the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: mere picturesqueness of medievalism. But it is something more than
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: an accident that romances like Romance languages are named after
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: rome Or. It came through the instinctive reaction of old
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: fashioned people like Johnson or Scott or Cobbett, wishing to
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: save old elements that had originally been Catholic against a
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: progress that was merely capitalist. But it led them to
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: denounce that capitalist progress and become like Cobbet practical foes
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: of Protestantism without being practicing followers of Catholicism, or it
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: came from the pre Raphaelites, or the opening of continental
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: art and culture by Matthew Arnold and Morris and Ruskin
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: and the rest. But examine the actual makeup of the
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: mind of a good Quaker or Congregational minister at this moment,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: and compare it with the mind of such a dissenter
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: in the Little Bethel before such culture came, and you
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: will see how much of his health and happiness he
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: owes to Ruskin, and what Ruskin owed to Giodo, to Morris,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: and what Morris owed to Chaucer to find scholars of
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: his own school like Philip Wicksti, and what they owe
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: to Dante and Saint Thomas. Such a man will still
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: sometimes talk of the Middle Ages as the Dark Ages.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: But the Dark Ages have improved the wallpaper on his wall,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: and the dress on his wife, and all the whole
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: dingy and vulgar life which he lived in the days
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: of Stiggins and Brother Tadger. For he is also a
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: Christian and lives only by the life of Christendom. It
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: is not easy to express this enormous inversion, which I
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: have tried here to suggest in the image of a
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: world turned inside out, I mean that the thing which
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: had been stared at as a small sumthing swells out
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: and swallows everything. Christendom is in the literal sense, a continent.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: We come to feel that it contains everything, even the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: things in revolt against itself. But it is perhaps the
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: most towering intellectual transformation of all, and the one that
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: it is hardest to undo, even for the sake of argument.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: It is almost impossible, even in imagination, to reverse that reversal.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Another way of putting it is to say that we
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: have come to regard all these historical figures as characters
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: in Catholic history, even if they are not Catholics, and
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: in a certain sense the historical as distinct from the
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: theological sense, they never do cease to be Catholic. They
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: are not people who have really created something entirely new
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: until they actually pass the border of reason and create
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: more or less crazy nightmares. But nightmares do not last,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: and most of them even now are in various stages
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: of waking up. Protestants are Catholics gone wrong. That is
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: what is really meant by saying they are Christians. Sometimes
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: they have gone very wrong, but not often have they
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: gone right ahead with their own particular wrong. Thus, a
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Calvinist is a Catholic obsessed with the Catholic idea of
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: the sovereignty of God. When he makes it mean that
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: God wishes particular people to be damned, we may say,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: with all restraint that he has become a rather morbid Catholic.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: In point of fact, he is a diseased Catholic, and
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: the disease left to itself would be death or madness.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: But as a matter of fact, the disease did not
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: last long, and it is itself practically dead. But every
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: step he takes back towards humanity is a step back
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: toward Catholicism. Thus, a Quaker is a Catholic obsessed with
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: the Catholic idea of gentle, simplicity and truth. But when
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: he made it to mean that it is allied to
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: say you, and an act of idolatry to take off
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: your hat to a lady, it is not too much
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: to say that whether or not he had a hat off,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: he certainly had a tile loose. But as a matter
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: of fact, he himself found it necessary to dispense with
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: the eccentricity and the hat and to leave the straight
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: road that would have led him to a lunatic asylum.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Only every step he takes back towards common sense is
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: a step towards Catholicism. In so far as he was right,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: he was a Catholic, and in so far as he
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: was wrong, he has not himself been able to remain
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: a Protestant. To us. Therefore, it is henceforth impossible to
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: think of the Quaker as a figure at the beginning
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: of a new Quaker history, or the Calvinist as the
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: founder of a new Calvinistic world. It is quite obvious
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: to us that they are simply characters in our own
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: Catholic history, only characters who caused a great deal of
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: trouble by trying to do something that we could do better,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: and that they did not really do at all. Now
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: some may suppose that this can be maintained of the
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: older sects like Calvinists and Quakers, but cannot be maintained
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: of modern movements like those of socialists or spiritualists. But
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: they will be quite wrong. The covering or continental character
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: of the Church applies just as much to modern manias
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: as to the old religious manias. It applies quite as
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: much to materialists or spiritualists as to Puritans. In all
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: of them you find that some Catholic dogma is first
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: taken for granted, then exaggerated into an error, and then
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: generally reacted against and rejected as an error, bringing the
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: individual in question a few steps back again on the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Homewood road. And this is almost always the mark of
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: such a heretic, that while he will wildly question any
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: other Catholic dogma, he never dreams of questioning his own
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: favorite Catholic dogma, and does not even seem to know
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: that it could be questioned. It never occurred to the
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Calvinists that anybody might use his liberty to deny or
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: limit the divine omnipotence, or to the Quaker that anyone
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: could question the supremacy of simplicity. That is exactly the
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: situation of the socialist. The Bolshevism, and every shade of
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: such theory of brotherhood is based upon one unfathomably mystical
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Catholic dogma, the equality of men. The Communists stake everything
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: on the equality of man, as the Calvinists staked everything
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: on the omnipotence of God. They ride it to death,
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: as the others rode their dogma to death, turning their
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: horse into a nightmare. But it never seems to occur
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: to them that some people do not believe in the
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Catholic dogma of the mystical equality of men. Yet there
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: are many, even among Christians, who are so heretical as
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: to question it. The socialists get into a great tangle
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: when they try to apply it. They compromise with their
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: own ideals, modify their own doctrine, and so find themselves
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: like the Quakers and the Calvinists, after all their extreme extravagances,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: a day's march nearer Rome. In short, the story of
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: these sects is not one of straight lines striking outwards
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: and onwards, though if it were, they would all be
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: striking in different directions. It is a pattern of curves,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: continually returning into the continent and common life of their
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and our civilization, and the summary of that civilization and
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: central sanity is the philosophy of the Catholic Church. To us,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: spiritualists are men studying the existence of spirits in a
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: brief and blinding oblivion of the existence of evil. Spirits.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: They are, as it were, people just educated enough to
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: have heard of ghosts, but not educated enough to have
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: heard of witches. If the evil spirits succeed in stopping
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: their education and stunting their minds, they may of course
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: go on forever repeating silly messages from Plato and doggerel
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: verses from Milton. But if they do go a step
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: or two further, instead of marking time on the borderland,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: their next step will be to learn what the Church
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: could have taught to us. Christian scientists are simply people
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: with one idea which they have never learned to balance
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: and combine with all the other ideas. That is why
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the wealthy business man so often becomes a Christian scientist.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: He is not used to ideas, and one idea goes
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: to his head like one glass of wine to a
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: starving man. But the Catholic Church is used to living
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: with ideas and walks among all those very dangerous wild
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: beasts with the poise and the lifted head of a
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: lion tamer. The Christian scientist can go on monotonously repeating
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: his one idea and remain a Christian scientist. But if
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: ever he really goes on to any other ideas, he
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: will be so much the newer to being a Catholic.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: When the convert has once seen the world like that,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: with one balanced ideas and a number of other ideas
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: that have left it and lost their balance. He does not,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: in fact experience any of the inconveniences that he might
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: reasonably have feared before that silent but stunning revolution. He
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: is not worried by being told that there is something
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: in spiritualism or something in Christian science. He knows there
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: is something in everything, but he has moved by the
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: more impressive fact that he finds everything in something, and
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: he is quite sure that if these investigators are really
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: looking for everything, and not merely looking for anything, they
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: will be more and more likely to look for it
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: in the same place. In that sense, he is far
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: less worried about them than he was when he thought
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: that one or other of them might be the only
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: person having any sort of communication with the higher mysteries,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: and obviously rather capable of making a mess of it.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: He is no more likely to be overawed by the
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: fact that missus Eddy achieved spiritual healing or mister Home
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: achieved bodily levitation than a fully just gentleman in Bond
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Street would be overawed by the top hat on the
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: head of a naked savage. A top hat may be
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: a good hat, but it is a bad costume. And
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: a magnetic trick may be a sufficient sensation, but it
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: is a very insufficient philosophy. He is no more envious
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: of a Bolshevist for making a revolution than of a
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: beaver for making a damn. For he knows his own
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: civilization can make things on a pattern not quite so
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: simple or so monotonous. But he believes this of his
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: civilization and his religion, and not merely of himself. There
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: is nothing supercilious about his attitude, because he is well
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: aware that he has only scratched the surface of the
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: spiritual estate that is now opened to him. In other words,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: the convert does not in the least abandoned investigation or
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: even adventure. He does not think he knows everything, nor
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: has he lost curiosity about the things he does not know.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: But experience has taught him that he will find nearly
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: everything somewhere inside that estate, and that a very large
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: number of people are finding next to nothing outside it.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: For the estate is not only a formal garden or
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: an ordered farm, there is plenty of hunting and fishing
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: on it, and, as the phrase goes, very good support
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: for this is one of the very queerest of the
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: common delusions about what happens to the convert. In some
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: modeled way, people have confused the natural remarks of converts
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: about having found moral peace with some idea of their
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: having found mental rest in the sense of mental inaction.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: They might as well say that a man who has
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: completely recovered his health after an attack of palsy or
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Saint Vitus's dance signalizes his healthy state by sitting absolutely
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: still like a stone. Recovering his health means recovering his
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: power of moving in the right way, as distinct from
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: the wrong way, but you will probably move a great
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: deal more than before. To become a Catholic is not
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: to leave off thinking, but to learn how to think.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: It is so in exactly the same sense in which
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: to recover from palsy is not to leave off moving,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: but to learn how to move. The Catholic convert has
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: for the first time a starting point for straight and
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: strenuous thinking. He has for the first time a way
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: of testing the truth in any question that he raises
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: as the world goes, especially at present, it is the
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: other people, the heathen and the heretics, who seem to
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: have every virtue, accept the power of connected thought. There
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: was indeed a brief period when a small minority did
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: some hard thinking on the heathen or heretical side. It
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: barely lasted from the time of Voltaire to the time
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: of Huxley. It has now entirely disappeared. What is now
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: called free thought is valued not because it is free thought,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: but because it is freedom from thought, because it is
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: free thoughtlessness. Nothing is more amusing to the convert when
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: his conversion has been complete for some time than to
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: hear the speculations about when or whether he will repent
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: of the conversion, when he will be sick of it,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: how long he will stand it, at what stage of
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: his external exasperation he will start up and say he
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: can bear it no more. For all this is founded
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: on that optical illusion about the outside and the inside
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: which I have tried to sketch in this chapter. The
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: outsiders stand by and see, or think they see the
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: convert entering with bowed head a sort of small temple,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: which they are convinced is fitted up inside like a prison,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: if not a torture chamber. But all they really know
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: about it is that he has passed through a door.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: They do not know that he has not gone into
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: the inner darkness, but out into the broad daylight. It
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: is he who is, in the beautiful and beatific sense
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: of the word, an outsider. He does not want to
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: go into a larger room because he does not know
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of any larger room to go into. He knows of
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: a large number of much smaller rooms, each of which
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: is labeled as being very large, But he is quite
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: sure he would be cramped in any of them. Each
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: of them professes to be a complete cosmos or scheme
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: of all things, but then so does the cosmos of
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: the Clapham sect or the clapped in Agapaeminy. Each of
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: them is supposed to be domed with the sky, or
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: painted inside with all the stars. But each of these
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: cosmic systems or machines seems to him much smaller and
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: even much simpler than the broad and balanced universe in
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: which he lives. One of them is labeled agnostic, but
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: he knows by experience that it has not really even
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: the freedom of ignorance. It is a wheel that must
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: always go round without a single jolt of miraculous interruption,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: a circle that must not be squared by any higher
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: mathematics mysticism, a machine that must be scoured as clean
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: of all spirits as if it were the avowed machine
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: of materialism. In living in a world with two orders,
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the supernatural and the natural, the convert feels he is
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: living in a larger world and does not feel any
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: temptation to crawl back into a smaller one. One of
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: them is labeled theosophical or Buddhistic, but he knows by
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: experience that it is only the same sort of wearisome
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: wheel used for spiritual things instead of material things. Living
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: in a world where he is free to do anything,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: even go to the devil, he does not see why
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: he should tie himself to the wheel of a mere destiny.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: One of them is labeled humanitarian, but he knows that
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: such humanitarians have really far less experience of humanity. He
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: knows that they are thinking almost entirely of men as
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: they are at this moment in modern cities, and have
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: nothing like the huge human interest of what began by
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: being preached to Egennares and Palestine, and is still being
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: preached to peasants in China. So clear is this perception
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: that I have sometimes put it to myself as something
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: between a melancholy meditation and a joke. Where should I go? Now?
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: If I did leave the Catholic Church, I certainly would
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: not go to any of those little social sects which
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: only express one idea at a time, because that idea
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: happens to be fashionable at the moment. The best I
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: could hope for would be to wander away into the
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: woods and become not a pantheist, for that is also
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: a limitation and a bore, but rather a pagan in
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: the mood to cry out that some particular mountain peak
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: or flowering fruit tree was sacred and a thing to
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: be worshiped. That at least would be beginning all over again.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: But it would bring me back to the same problem
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: in the end. If it was reasonable to have a
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: sacred tree, it was not unreasonable to have a sacred crucifix.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: And if the God was to be found on one peak,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: he may as reasonably be found under one spire. To
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: find a new religion is sooner or later to have
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: found one. And why should I have been discontented with
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: the one I had found, especially, as I said in
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the first words of this essay, when it is the
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: old religion which seems capable of remaining knew. I know
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: very well that if I went upon that journey, I
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: should either despair or return, and that none of the
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: trees would ever be a substitute for the real sacred tree.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Paganism is better than pantheism, for Paganism is free to
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: imagine divinities, while pantheism is forced to pretend in a
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: priggish way that all things are equally divine. But I
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: should not imagine any divinity that was sufficiently divine. I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: seem to know that weary return through the woodlands, for
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I think, in some symbolic fashion, I have walked that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: road before. For as I have tried to confess here
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: without excessive egotism, I think I am the sort of
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: man who came to Christ from Pan and Dionysus, and
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: not from Luther or a loud That the conversion I
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: understand is that of the pagan and not the Puritan.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: And upon that antique conversion is found in the whole
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: world that we know. It is a transformation far more
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: vast and tremendous than anything that has been meant for
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: many years past, at least in England and America, by
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: a sectarian controversy or a doctrinal division. On the height
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: of that ancient empire and that international experience, humanity had
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: a vision. It has not had another, but only quarrels
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: about that one. Paganism was the largest thing in the world,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: and Christianity was larger, and everything else has been comparatively small.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: End of Chapter four