“I have been asked to
explain something about myself which seems to be regarded as very
extraordinary. The problem has been presented to me in the form of a cutting
from a very flattering American article, which yet contained a certain
suggestion of wonder. So far as I can understand, it is thought extraordinary
that a man should be ordinary. I am ordinary in the correct sense of the term;
which means the acceptance of an order; a Creator and the Creation, the common sense of gratitude for
Creation, life and love as gifts permanently good, marriage and chivalry as
laws rightly controlling them, and the rest of the normal
traditions of our race and religion. It is also thought a little odd that I
regard the grass as green, even after some newly-discovered Slovak artist has
painted it grey; that I think daylight very tolerable in spite of thirteen
Lithuanian philosophers sitting in a row and cursing the light of day; and
that, in matters more polemical, I
actually prefer weddings to divorces and babies to Birth Control. These
eccentric views, which I share with the overwhelming majority of mankind, past
and present, I should not attempt to defend here one by one. And I only give a
general reply for a particular reason. I wish to make it unmistakably plain
that my defense of these sentiments is not sentimental. It would be easy to
gush about these things; but I defy the reader, after reading this, to find the
faintest trace of the tear of sensibility. I hold this
view not because it is sensibility, but because it is sense."do1
Monday, September 14, 2015
Chesterton: "Because it is sense"
“I have been asked to
explain something about myself which seems to be regarded as very
extraordinary. The problem has been presented to me in the form of a cutting
from a very flattering American article, which yet contained a certain
suggestion of wonder. So far as I can understand, it is thought extraordinary
that a man should be ordinary. I am ordinary in the correct sense of the term;
which means the acceptance of an order; a Creator and the Creation, the common sense of gratitude for
Creation, life and love as gifts permanently good, marriage and chivalry as
laws rightly controlling them, and the rest of the normal
traditions of our race and religion. It is also thought a little odd that I
regard the grass as green, even after some newly-discovered Slovak artist has
painted it grey; that I think daylight very tolerable in spite of thirteen
Lithuanian philosophers sitting in a row and cursing the light of day; and
that, in matters more polemical, I
actually prefer weddings to divorces and babies to Birth Control. These
eccentric views, which I share with the overwhelming majority of mankind, past
and present, I should not attempt to defend here one by one. And I only give a
general reply for a particular reason. I wish to make it unmistakably plain
that my defense of these sentiments is not sentimental. It would be easy to
gush about these things; but I defy the reader, after reading this, to find the
faintest trace of the tear of sensibility. I hold this
view not because it is sensibility, but because it is sense."
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