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January 31, 2007
Hello everyone,
In the previous issue, we visited G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, paying particular attention to his suggestion that “mysticism” (as opposed to materialism) “makes men sane.” The Christian, he writes further down in the paragraph we cited, “puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health.” Of all the ideas contained in our extended quotation, that particular sentence has stuck in my brain, rattling round and around these past two weeks. I have also ventured back and read more of the surrounding chapters, and it is not at all clear to me where his thought stops and mine begins, as the themes running through my mind appear to be closely akin to his own, likely at times even prompted by the same. Let us look at a little of the context surrounding his words, locating ourselves on Chesterton’s mental map.
Before writing Orthodoxy, Chesterton wrote a book called Heretics. Apparently this book was ridiculed because it consisted chiefly of a negative evaluation of the prevailing philosophies of our day: that is, it criticized perceived faults in the philosophical systems advanced by others (negative analysis) and then failed to advance any of its own in turn (positive critique). Never one to back down from a challenge and believing himself thrown the gauntlet (particularly by the now little-known author and critic George Slythe Street), Chesterton promptly wrote Orthodoxy as just that positive apologetic.
Chesterton does not try to build his argument for orthodoxy on the doctrine of original sin, because he realizes it is contested even among Christians (not to mention Orthodox Jews). He cannot resist stating his own opinion on the matter, however: of all the dogmas associated with the Church, he believes original sin the only fully empirically verifiable. Avoiding this starting point for his argument, then, he takes a step back and frames his apologetic in terms not of good and evil—a necessary consideration in any examination of sin and its fruits—but of sanity and insanity, mental health and the degrees to which it is absent. It is precisely this choice of speaking of the world in the psychological language of sane and insane that leads to his characterization of mysticism producing health and sanity, materialism instability and “dis-ease.”
Of particular interest to our discussion today is his assessment of the mentally disturbed patient who suffers from delusions:
The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s.
Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument. . . . (Chapter II: The Maniac)
It can be exceedingly difficult to argue with a delusional person and is in many cases futile, or you will soon become a suspect yourself. The reason is often quite simple. If, with my own two eyeballs, I see you pull a ski mask over your face, take a gun from beneath your coat, and enter a convenience store and a few moments later I watch you leaving in a great haste with a bulging sack in your hand, I am going to be very disinclined to believe your protests later that you not only have not robbed the store but in fact were nowhere in the vicinity at the time. Now as the truth may have it, I may have seen someone who looked so much like you as to be a perfect replica: you might be telling me the honest truth. But which testimony will I surely believe: that of my own eyes or the one issuing from your lips? Likewise, to the delusional person, his own insights are sharper, surer, and more trustworthy than your own. This factor is especially true of the man who believes all others are out to get him, for he trusts no one but himself. Virtually the only way you will ever break his delusion (aside from earnest prayer!) is to do something completely out of context. I should know: I have some first-hand experience on the topic, and I shall never forget how a sane man once wrapped his arms around his delusional friend’s shoulders and told him how deeply he loved him: what’s a man gone mad to say to that? Love speaks when logic lies silent and is exceedingly difficult to argue with.
So then, if all circles are infinite in shape yet nevertheless come in larger and smaller sizes, what might this observation say to us of our world and of life? For Chesterton, it suggests that just as the madman’s circle is infinite but inanely small given how little space is actually contained within it, so too is the circle given us by materialism. For materialism logically and systematically compacts our universe into mere matter. It says, with great satisfaction, that the God hypothesis is entirely unnecessary, its own system is entirely adequate, and it feels smug believing that Ockham’s Razor—that rule of needlessly multiplied hypotheses—has its back. Yet what would Ockham’s Razor say to the deranged man? Would it suggest that believing that other men were not in fact out to get him, that he was not the King of England, that he was not, in fact, Jesus Christ: would Ockham’s Razor say that such claims were needlessly complicating a simpler and more sufficient explanation? Would Ockham’s Razor believe it an adequate explanation that all men were indeed after our poor tortured friend? Or would human sensibility itself cry out against such a hypothesis, insisting that while this explanation may very well be logically consistent—like a circle—it is nevertheless lacking in some profound way? Is there a sense in which materialism, too, fails to satisfy the intuitive requirements of Ockham’s Razor even if superficially complete? We know, of course, what Chesterton claims: materialism forms a perfect circle, but one that is just a little too small.
Now then, we have already spilled quite a bit of ink about the futility of trying to rationally persuade a man deranged: our supplications might work, given enough time and persistence, but certainly not until the man is willing to open his mind—even a crack—to new possibilities. More than likely, as Chesterton suggests, we will not only fail to convince the man gone mad, but will in fact lose the argument. His answer, forming a perfect circle, is virtually impenetrable. Like the man who believes that all Oxford dons are out to do him harm, we will never be able to reason with him: in fact, if we spend too much time trying to dissuade him, he will conclude that we too are out to get him and our own credibility will accordingly be compromised. For the fact is, the man knows that he is right, his circular logic overshadowed only by his supreme certainty. Knowing that he is right, he knows that we are all wrong. That is what his logic tells him, for it remains a circle unbroken, unable to admit even the smallest break or gap. He cannot admit we might be right, because his very premise precludes it.
Chesterton, then, sees in the madman a metaphor for the materialist. The materialist has an almost air-tight circle and a ready answer to virtually every objection. This is played out in the reply Francis Collins offers Richard Dawkins in the God vs. Science link included in the previous issue regarding to the argument from design:
Certainly science should continue to see whether we can find evidence for multiverses that might explain why our own universe seems to be so finely tuned. But I do object to the assumption that anything that might be outside of nature is ruled out of the conversation. That’s an impoverished view of the kinds of questions we humans can ask, such as “Why am I here?”, “What happens after we die?”, “Is there a God?” If you refuse to acknowledge their appropriateness, you end up with a zero probability of God after examining the natural world because it doesn’t convince you on a proof basis. But if your mind is open about whether God might exist, you can point to aspects of the universe that are consistent with that conclusion. (God vs. Science)
Collins summarizes his position by suggesting: “I would challenge the statement that my scientific instincts are any less rigorous than yours. The difference is that my presumption of the possibility of God and therefore the supernatural is not zero, and yours is.”
In a great many ways, Dawkins is a classic representative of the materialist’s tenets: he admits the possibility of a God only insofar as it is a fiction capable of inspiring others. He does not admit it at all as a possible fact. And Chesterton, if he were alive today, would resoundingly agree with Collins. For just as the man who believes false things has closed his mind to the possibility the he holds an inadequate and incomplete explanation of reality (for his thoughts are, in fact, logically valid though not logically sound), the materialist generally regards the question of God from the standpoint of “zero probability”; he or she regards the “God question” as a “null hypothesis.” For the materialist, then, God is an unnecessary hypothesis that needlessly complicates the question of an universe that can quite satisfactorily be explained in purely mechanistic terms. Thus, he or she is not long willing to entertain such a possibility as a God who is Himself inexplicable. If explanation is key, what have we gained by putting an unexplainable God at back of our mechanistic explanation? To this question, of course, Chesterton would answer “sanity, health, and clear-sightedness”: “The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.”
We should note that there are different degrees of insanity and different levels of materialism. The circle we have drawn with Chesterton’s help does explain a good many things, but we should take care lest we inadvertently clamp it down too tightly, allowing nothing to escape. Sanity, health, and clear-sightedness may well be afforded the materialist as much as anyone else. And yet within myself there is an intuition that there is something somewhat impoverished in the materialist’s view overall. It is not something easy to articulate and at best I understand it only intuitively. I would not necessarily explain it in terms of happiness, exactly, but in terms of something deeper than that: something more inward, something deeper, something far less tangible than happiness though in some ways perhaps every bit as fleeting if only because we are human and cannot infinitely sustain infinity. I do not believe that the believer will always be happier or wiser or more virtuous and yet I do believe and believe passionately that somehow the believer’s life is enriched nevertheless: that though the materialist may explain the tempest by the teapot, there is still something that fails to be captured, something that rings just a little hollow and seems a bit small.
I believe there is something to Chesterton’s observations about circles of various sizes. For just as the materialist’s circle seems to me lacking in a way that evades articulate expression, it also seems to me that even larger and much more respected circles are still lacking themselves. I speak most especially of Chesterton’s comments about Buddhism, a religious and philosophical tradition toward which I entertain a growing level of appreciation and respect. You may recall that Chesterton writes:
Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers. (Chapter II: The Maniac)
I say again: I have a great deal of respect for Buddhism and have learned, and continue to learn, a great deal from it. It strikes me as being inherently practical and offers a tremendous amount of insight into the affairs of the human heart and true virtue and honor. In fact, it often seems to do a better job than Christianity not only in articulating but inspiring the same in those who follow its statutes and has a strong, sensible empirical base. Yet all the same, I cannot help thinking at times that its circle is also just a little too small. For while it is inherently reasonable, sound, and empirically verifiable, it still seems to be lacking in some way. And I agree that we do well to focus on this life here and now, yet there is that whisper of faith and hope within me that yearns and longs for something more, that somehow in some strange way believes that we were created for bigger and better things. Buddhism leaves me largely alone in the world, commendable in calling me to take responsibility and yet still a little colder than I believe the universe to be on some deep level within my spirit. And it speaks of the possibility of nirvana, an idea every bit as intangible as Christianity’s paradise and perhaps even easier to rationally defend. For that matter, stroke for stroke, Buddhism often seems the more rationally defensible faith and the more sensible (though not necessarily truer) when lined up toe to toe with Christianity. Yet I think again of the sensibility and logic of the materialist as well and am reminded of the heart and of the child, neither of which are deemed particularly sensible and yet both of which wield a tremendous amount of power.
Now then, I have tried and I have failed in expressing my thoughts, just as I knew that I would. The fact is, I cannot explain why Buddhism seems to me a little lacking. I freely admit to myself and to everyone reading these words that it may be lacking at least in part because I fail to understand it adequately: it may be me that has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. That is certainly a possibility and one I do not wish glibly to dismiss. And yet there is something deeper within me still that feels like Eric is seeing something with the clarity of insight and intuition that he really does know and understand that of which he speaks, a humble kind of knowing and awareness that there really is something about Buddhism and the circle it draws that will forever be bounded, ever and always a partial revelation albeit a most exceptionally wise and enlightened one from which he yet has a great deal to learn. Such thoughts are heavy and ponderous.
On a slightly lighter note, it seems to me that if there is a lesson to be found in all of this talk of madmen and materialists, it is that in the life of health and vitality, the strongest faith is tempered by a healthy degree of doubt, the problem arising when problems arise not from the doubt itself but only when and what we doubt and why: we can learn even from our failures, for we learn best by contrast. Further, it is to our benefit to recall that faith is not the substance of things seen. Recall the comments by Chesterton that started us off today: the Christian “puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health.” There seems to be a growing tendency within parts of the Christian world to attempt to enshrine certain doctrines in airtight bundles, adopting an approach to truth that forms a virtual mirror to that of the materialist. (In my mind, I tend to equate the materialistic faith of Richard Dawkins with the faith of many such believers, seeing them as but two peas in a pod, however apparently opposed on their surface.) Yet it is my conviction that the healthiest believer does not try to form such rigid and inflexible distinctions because he or she has learned that they are brittle and too easily break. Rather, the healthy believer is willing to say to the inquirer, “I don’t really understand myself entirely. But I do know the world to be a larger place: I do know that there are trees and sunshine and that love and goodness do exist, for I have felt them. I do not always understand. In fact, I rarely understand on every level. But my heart tells me that there must be something more to this life, there simply must. What is in my heart is stronger than what is in my head.” That is hardly a logical argument. It is not exactly an illogical argument either, but it is not tightly reasoned and insistent on absolute certainty. Rather, it is what it is: it is a declaration of faith.
It seems to me that the wisest approach to Christianity is that which acknowledges divine mystery. As much as it loves musing about the endless possibilities of things not yet seen and as much inspiration as it draws from such healthy imaginings, it is ultimately content to let mysteries remain mysterious and approach questions of faith not as problems to be solved, but rather as mysteries to be further deepened and developed, effectively cultivating the mystery to facilitate further growth.
We see a related concept in human sexuality: in its perverse forms, it has been reduced to animalistic impulse, easily enough explained and dismissed. But at its healthiest, it sees its complement as mysterious, sacred, a joy to be treasured, savored, enjoyed, revered, even worshipped to a degree. If the mystery were to be removed, the joy would likewise fade. But because there is always something slightly unexplainable about human sexuality such that on the brink of its explication it wriggles free, it holds awe. And that is has power, no one can deny: entire societies have fallen upon its corruption and persons otherwise of great honor and integrity have been brought to their knees upon failing to respect its dominion. As the Apostle might say, “It is a great mystery, but I speak of Christ and His Bride.”
Like the palm tree solidly rooted yet capable of flexing in the wind, the healthy believer does indeed place “the seed of dogma in a central darkness”—the place darkest and most central his or her own heart—and out of the overflow of that heart springs forth branches of a great tree, wells forth springs of everlasting life. For where the heart is, there also is one’s treasure. It is not so important what our heads tell us about things, not ultimately. To be sure, our heads can keep us from frivolous affairs and can serve as guardians of a sort. But there comes a point in life in which we must dig even more deeply and we must ask ourselves what our hearts are saying. For I am convinced that on the very deepest levels of being, only our hearts are capable of telling us the truth. Of all those things Blaise Pascal has said of faith, undoubtedly the most profound of all is his well-known suggestion that “the heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.” Or, as Evelyn Underhill writes and we have quoted numerous times, “Mere knowledge, taken alone, is a matter of receiving, not of acting: of eyes, not wings: a dead alive business at the best. ... [W]ilful action of every kind, however intellectual it may seem, is always the result of interest, and interest involves feeling.”
The intellect is proud and haughty and the heart is such a simple thing. Yet it is the heart that makes life livable and if it is too long neglected, it will rise up in protest. The most tortured souls are not tortured by their intellects, but by their neglected hearts. At the center of the universe, then, sits not a great throbbing mind, impersonal and inaccessible, but nothing less than the broken, bleeding heart of Christ, pumping its life-giving blood throughout all the sinews, joints, and fibers of the entire edifice; it is love and not logic that rules the universe and binds it together. Yes, surely, it is mysticism that keeps men sane.
God bless,
Eric
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