The Everlasting Book

As usual this time of year I have about as many new books on my shelf awaiting my reading as I have lingering pounds on my body awaiting my shedding (both thanks to the celebration of Christmas). One addition to my library this year was G.K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man. Not having read much of Chesterton's I must plead ignorance and admit up front that I am quite a novice regarding this author. So I went to that fount of all necessary knowledge, Wikipedia, to brush up on him a little. I was pleased to find out that C.S. Lewis credited Chesterton's The Everlasting Man with "baptising" his intellect. This gave me the encouragement I needed to continue crawling my way through at a snail's pace, which seems to be the only way I can get through this intellectually-tedious-but-rewarding book. If ever there were a noble reward for reading, surely a baptism of some sort would be it.

Though the reading is slow (and is not helped by the fact of the many typos in this edition) I have, nevertheless, already become addicted to Chesterton because he is a kindred spirit. The first page: ". . . I do not believe in being dehumanized in order to study humanity" instantly draws my mind to Polanyi and my own personal views of how the enlightenment really did have a dehumanizing effect. He also critiques modernism in pointing out "the fallacy of supposing that because an idea is greater in the sense of larger therefore it is greater in the sense of more fundamental and fixed and certain." (39)  I treat the term "certainty" with great caution. And generally Chesterton's admiration of beauty, poetry (in the philosophical sense; opposed to the prosaic), mystery, and the imagination endear me to him.

A couple other interesting points: He claims that many so-called "religions" are not religions at all (in the sense of comparing them to Christianity as a religion) and distinguishes them rather as civilizations or ways of life, such as Confucionism; he states that he "disregard[s] this modern method of classifications." (49)

Also interesting was his discussion of the symbol of the circle vs. the cross. The "circle is a curve that in one sense includes everything, and in another sense comes to nothing. . . The cross is a thing at right angles pointing boldly in opposite directions; but the Swastika is the same thing in the very act of returning to the recurrent curve. That crooked cross is in fact a cross turning into a wheel." (82-83) This book was written in 1925. Fascinating to consider this as a foreshadow of the symbol's future philosophical implications.

Well, I must leave it there and continue my musings after I have read further.