The Course of Conversion, III
Chesterton, G.K.
632 THE COMMONWEAL November 3, 1926 THE COURSE OF CONVERSION III. THE WORLD...
...at the Quaker shop of peace and reason that they were not named in the same language...
...632 THE COMMONWEAL November 3, 1926 THE COURSE OF CONVERSION III...
...it were, they would all be striking in different direc- The Christian Scientist can go on monotonously retions...
...Catholic...
...But it a kind of vast and airy crystal palace in which there is simply an historical fact that the Roman empire was were exhibits set side by side...
...Thus a was merely capitalist...
...But been similar things in other places, but they could most people preferred to deal at other and more businot be called by the same name for the simple ness-like booths...
...they gone right ahead with their own particular The return of Catholic ideas to the separated parts wrong...
...and in so far as he was wrong, he has to Giotto ; to Morris, and what Morris owed to not himself been able to remain a Protestant...
...Or it came from the to take off your hat to a lady, it is not too much to say Pre-Raphaelities or the opening of continental art and that whether or not he had a hat off, he certainly had culture by Matthew Arnold and Morris and Ruskin a tile loose...
...As a matter of fact, in pointed roof half fallen in and pointed windows, most the case of things so large, so unique and so creative of them broken with stones by passers-by...
...But nightmares do not last...
...He is not used to ideas and one find themselves, like the Quakers and the Calvinists, idea goes to his head, like one glass of wine to a starvafter all their extreme extravagances, a day's march ing man...
...Only every a dissenter in the Little Bethel before such culture step he takes back toward common sense is a step back came...
...It came through the Roman- he makes it mean that God wishes particular people tic movement, a glimpse of the mere picturesqueness to be damned, we may say with all restraint that he of mediaevalism...
...They are, as it were, people just of any such theory of brotherhood is based upon one educated enough to have heard of ghosts, but not eduunfathomably mystical Catholic dogma : the equality cated enough to have heard of witches...
...But if they do go a step or two further, horse into a nightmare...
...That leader in `student activi- something which is very subordinate, namely, how to ties' will in time become the head of a big corporation, prepare youth to make a living...
...plenty, or the Salvation Army store where the showWe know what we mean by a Roman emperor...
...a few of used it of that empire...
...even fancied it had been rather badly used...
...Is it not to be feared...
...it is the Catholic Church stands alone...
...But we never can equal creeds inside an indifferent cosmos is quite false...
...In point of accident that romances, like Romance languages, are fact, he is a diseased Catholic...
...That is exactly the spirits, in a brief and blinding oblivion of the existence situation of the socialist...
...true in a much deeper and more sympathetic sense than But it is, perhaps, the most sensational of the silent may at first appear...
...In other moon, it is much more sui generis than that...
...But it led them to denounce Quaker is a Catholic obsessed with the Catholic idea that capitalist progress and become, like Cobbett, of gentle simplicity and truth...
...anyhow, there was something negaChurch is the Church and is not a sect...
...The cosmos, being the empire and that it was not a small nationality...
...The other young man gets through college education is common enough, but I was not his studies successfully, but he becomes an outstanding prepared to believe that it is accepted by the alumni leader in `student activities,' devoting much of his time of Catholic colleges...
...They ride it to death as ing silly messages from Plato and doggerel verses the others rode their dogma to death, turning their from Milton...
...to fine scholars of his own school, like Philip To us, therefore, it is henceforth impossible to Wicksteed, and what they owe to Dante and Saint think of the Quaker as a figure at the beginning of Thomas...
...But it never seems to occur instead of marking time on the borderland, their next to them that some people do not believe in the Catho- step will be to learn what the Church could have lic dogma of the mystical equality of men...
...They are not people who have really cre- It never occurred to the Calvinist that anybody 634 THE COMMONWEAL November 3, 1926 might use his liberty to deny or limit the divine om- central sanity is the philosophy of the Catholic Church...
...It is a matbe more convenient to call them the sects...
...he takes exercise of some this settlement of the case was regarded by them as sort, goes to games, and may go to a social gather- complete and final...
...everybody who used the word us even pointed out that many details in the ruin were "ecclesia" used it of that ecclesia...
...Yet there taught...
...FAILURES OF OUR HIGHER SCHOOLS By JAMES BURNS S OME time ago, I put the following question to and your honor student might, perhaps, attain to the two representative Catholic alumni: "Suppose position of his private secretary...
...It is a pattern of curves continually returning peating his one idea and remain a Christian Scientist...
...The prin- the border of reason and create more or less crazy ciple of life in all these variations of Protestantism, nightmares...
...and cutting the idea that it is a church...
...Some of us were sorry for it and ply correct to confine the one word to the one example...
...And you will see how much of his health and toward Catholicism...
...Nor is there tive about it...
...they compromise with their why the wealthy business man so often becomes a own ideals...
...but it is true...
...But as the quietism of Fenelon appeared technically incalling the wreckers to break up a ship does not turn side the Church...
...but to begin with, it is certainly upheavals or reversals in the mind that constitute the true in a perfectly plain and historical sense, which has revolution called conversion...
...But Thus a Calvinist is a Catholic obsessed with the though the influence came through many centres, it Catholic idea of the sovereignty of God...
...But there is evidently a special danger here is strictly obliged to do in order to get his degree...
...we can, man beat the big drum outside...
...lie is interested surprise me, on further conversation, was to see that in whatever is going on...
...But examine the actual make-up of the found it necessary to dispense with the eccentricity mind of a good Quaker or Congregational minister (and the hat) and to leave the straight road that at this moment, and compare it with the mind of such would have led him to a lunatic asylum...
...Now of Christendom...
...It is, if words, Quakerism is but a temporary form of quietthe critic chooses to think so, the ruin of an attempt ism which has arisen technically outside the Church at a universal religion which was bound to fail...
...I do not in- But in a much more profound and philosophical tend any expression of contempt about "the churches...
...But when he made it practical foes of Protestantism without being prac- mean that it is a lie to say "you" and an act of idolatry tising followers of Catholicism...
...nearer Rome...
...We come to feel that it religious manias...
...but he these college graduates became a big, rich, influential does not `go in' for such things with anything like a business man and therefore a great success in life, leading purpose, his leading purpose being study, with while the other's comparative poverty and obscurity all that goes with it, and nothing more...
...some may suppose that this can be maintained of the It is not easy to express this enormous inversion older sects like Calvinists and Quakers, but cannot be which I have here tried to suggest in the image of a maintained of modern movements like those of socialworld turned inside out...
...trouble by trying to do something that we could do For he also is a Christian and lives only by the life better and that they did not really do at all...
...Both school and college," says men, each a graduate of a cultural course of studies, President Nicholas Murray Butler, speaking of Ameriand each having had quite a successful business career...
...it applies quite as much to materialcontains everything, even the things in revolt against ists or Spiritualists as to Puritans...
...Such a man will still sometimes talk of the a new Quaker history, or the Calvinist as the founder middle-ages as the dark ages...
...I mean that the thing which ists or Spiritualists...
...One of them devotes himself whole-heartedly swer...
...abandoning the noble ideals which have come down Such was the question I put to these two Catholic to us from the past...
...The case given, no doubt, often works out in to books and study, his only ambition being along this some such way, although not always...
...THE WORLD INSIDE OUT By G. K. CHESTERTON T HE first fallacy about the Catholic Church is the ship into one of its own timbers...
...Every man conceives nothing to do with sympathy at all...
...But what did line...
...be certain that he is exactly equivalent...
...Catholic cathedral...
...It does not merely belong to cathedral that covers everything like the vault of the a class of Christian churches...
...and we of the culture about them as were the Roman empire were told that this particular exhibit was the Roman and the Roman Church, it is not controversial, but sim- Catholic Church...
...The communists stake everything on the spirits succeed in stopping their education and stunting equality of men, as the Calvinists staked everything on their minds, they may, of course, go on forever repeatthe omnipotence of God...
...that, while he will acters in Catholic history, even if they are not Catho- wildly question any other Catholic dogma, he never lics...
...and the disease, left to named after Rome...
...I know that this will times they have gone very wrong...
...It may be a good thing that personal...
...If the evil of men...
...I mean that it is a Poland up into three pieces does not make Poland church in the sense in which the Nonconformist the same as Posen...
...they modify their own doctrine...
...To us, Christian Scientists are simply people are many, even among Christians, who are so heretical with one idea, which they have never learned to balas to question it...
...most of Everybody who originally used the word "empire" us regarded it as dirty and disreputable...
...Bolshevism and every shade of evil spirits...
...It is the Quaker meeting-house Now in that, if in no other sense, the Catholic that is inside the Catholic cathedral...
...This is ter more psychological and more difficult to describe...
...and then, undo even for the sake of argument...
...But when always came from one...
...sense, this notion that the Church is one of the sects nor is it an expression of contempt to say that it would is the great fallacy of the whole affair...
...and most of in so far as it is not a principle of death, consists of them even now are in various stages of waking up...
...Their conclusion was, that one of ing now and then, and so for other matters...
...if we like, talk of a Chinese emperor, just as we can, Now conversion consists very largely, on its intelif we like, take a particular sort of a mandarin and lectual side, in the discovery that all that picture of say he is equivalent to a marquis...
...Someto be recharged with vitality...
...In so far as he was right, he happiness he owes to Ruskin, and what Ruskin owed was a Catholic...
...That is when they try to apply it...
...But, as a matter of fact, he himself and the rest...
...And in a certain sense-the historical as distinct dreams of questioning his own favorite Catholic dogfrom the theological sense-they never do cease to be ma, does not even seem to know it could be questioned...
...what remained in them of Catholic Christendom...
...can education in general, "have in large part taktn One of them promptly gave this answer, to which the their minds off the true business of education, which other unhesitatingly agreed: "Here is the way they is to prepare youth to live, and have fixed them upon will be apt to turn out...
...for it was the age of science...
...had been stared at as a small something swells out The covering or continental character of the Church and swallows everything...
...But every step he takes back toward had originally been Catholic against a progress that humanity is a step back toward Catholicism...
...made of glass and iron, was partly transparent and And it is simply an historical fact that the Roman partly colorless...
...Another way of putting it is to say that we again on the homeward road...
...It does not merely crystal palace...
...But, as a matter tive reaction of old-fashioned people like Johnson or of fact, the disease did not last long, and is itself now Scott or Cobbett, wishing to save old elements that practically dead...
...And this is almost have come to regard all these historical figures as char- always the mark of such a heretic...
...But the Catholic Church is used to living with ideas In short, the story of these sects is not one of and walks among all those very dangerous wild beasts straight lines striking outward and onward, though if with the poise and the lifted head of a lion-tamer...
...for the thing It is not a question of comparing the merits and dewe are thinking about is peculiar to our own history fects of the Quaker meeting-house set beside the and in that sense stands alone...
...But both were in themselves temNovember 3, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 633 porary and would have, like Fenelon, sooner or later ated something entirely new, until they actually pass to return to the Church in order to live...
...and Protestants are Catholics gone wrong...
...but not often have sound like a statement to be challenged...
...He graduates meant simply failure...
...Christendom is, in the applies just as much to modern manias as to the old literal sense, a continent...
...two young men, about equally talented, enter col- Now, I was not particularly surprised at this anlege...
...of Christendom was often, indeed, indirect...
...and toward the end of the row distinguish between the little things he likes and the there was a particularly dingy and dismal one, with a big thing he has broken...
...and it is when we look up at the vast belong to a class of human religions...
...It is quite obvious to improved the wall-paper on his wall and the dress on us that they are simply characters in our own Catholic his wife and all the whole dingy and vulgar life which history, only characters who caused a great deal of he lived in the days of Stiggins and Brother Tadger...
...Chaucer...
...newspapers talk about "the churches...
...It is almost generally reacted against and rejected as an error, impossible even in imagination to reverse that re- bringing the individual in question a few steps back versal...
...In all of them itself...
...Nor do I know to what extent to these, and doing such intellectual work only as he this is so...
...Here stood all up...
...into the continent and common life of their and our But if ever he really goes on to any other ideas, he civilization...
...and so Christian Scientist...
...Or it came through the instinc- itself, would be death or madness...
...nipotence, or to the Quaker that anyone could ques- To us, Spiritualists are men studying the existence of tion the supremacy of simplicity...
...But it is perhaps the most towering intellectual you find that some Catholic dogma is, first, taken for transformation of all and the one that it is hardest to granted...
...There may have artistically beautiful or architecturally important...
...himself as moving about in a cosmos of some kind...
...The socialists get into a great tangle ance and combine with all the other ideas...
...arching over all our heads, a roof as anything narrow or unreasonable in saying that the remote as a sky, it seemed to be impartial and imChurch is the Church...
...And even a person who thinks it fortunate that the religions in a row-the churches or sects or whatthe Church broke up into sects ought to be able to ever we called them...
...but it cer- which were all carefully ticketed and arranged in tainly was not one of the nations into which it broke rows...
...Considered distant dome covering all the exhibits that we trace quite coldly and impartially, as by a man from the the Gothic roof and the pointed windows...
...that is what to Catholic Christendom they have always returned is really meant by saying they are Christians...
...then, exaggerated into an error...
...This view of the function of with high honors...
...Yet, he is not a 'wall-flower...
...Our attention was fixed on the exhibits, the Roman empire broke up into nations...
...for Catholic education, the danger of its becoming inNow, these two young men go out in the world: how fected by the Mammon-worship of the age and of are they going to turn out in the course of the years...
...and the summary of that civilization and will be so much the nearer to being a Catholic...
...Thus, for instance, I have much more sympathy for and the man of the days of my youth walked about in small nationalities than I have for small sects...
...but it is something more than an has become a rather morbid Catholic...
...But the dark ages have of a new Calvinistic world...
...But they will be quite wrong...
Vol. 4 • November 1926 • No. 26
