The Persecution of Religion
The Persecution of Religion
by G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News March 8, 1924
(Source: G. K. Chesterton, Collected Works, Volume xxxiii, The Illustrated London News 1923-1925, Ignatius Press, 1990, pp. 286-290)
Most of us feel something rather arresting, not to say alarming, about the case of the man who was locked up in a lunatic asylum for eight years for being religious, or for taking a reasonable interest in the word “parallelogram,” and the idea of the end of the world. The persecution of science by religion is something of which we hear a good deal, and a good deal more than is historically accurate. But, in any case, it has pretty well come to an end. The persecution of religion by science has relatively, perhaps, only begun; but it is already at work, in we know not how many obscure cases of pedantry and cruelty. The mystics are very likely to be the martyrs when the psychologists become the kings. But there is involved a paradox that is still more peculiar. It is not merely that anything religious may be persecuted on the ground that it is not rational. It is also that anything irrational may be tolerated so long as it is also irreligious. It is only lunacy to assert religion; it is no longer lunacy to deny reason. If it were, all the professors of pragmatism would be locked up. The very incidents in this case afford an illustration. A man may be represented as mad and as making a mystical riddle of the word “parallelogram.” But a man is not regarded as mad because he says that parallel lines always meet. Our fathers would have called him a rank, raving madman; denying the self-evident and uttering a contradiction in terms. We only call him a mathematician of the newer school of relativity or the fourth dimension. The man who said: “Two and two may make five in the fixed stars” was a lunatic; and none the less a lunatic for being a literary man. I willingly admit that men of science have not a monopoly of this mental breakdown. But certainly the man who could talk as if the stars were fixed, and the numbers unfixed, was suffering from a complete mental breakdown. It is not half so crazy to expect the end of the world to come soon as to expect the Superman to come soon. Yet how many earnest evolutionists in our time have written gravely as if the Superman was to be expected next week! Things do come to an end; and a thing designed is generally reviewed by the designer when it has come to an end. A man planting a rhododendron bush sees it bloom and wither and pronounces on the experiment; and there is nothing irrational in a day of judgement, assuming a design. But there is nothing in the world to show that a rhododendron all by itself will sprout into a super-rhododendron all the colors of the rainbow, merely because that would be a superior plant. The Superman was simply and solely a phantom called out of the void by the imagination of a lunatic; a quite literal lunatic named Nietzche. Yet how vivid that utterly unreasonable vision became for many of our wavering and weak-minded generation! And the strangest thing of all is that it was some of the best brains that were thus bewitched. They also have their word “parallelogram,” like the blessed word “Mesopotamia”; but, while few soldiers want to go back to Mesopotamia, there are evidently sages who want to go back to Methuselah.
I need hardly say that I am not arguing that Mr. Bernard Shaw has a tile loose; I am only pointing out that there are far more tiles loose on the Hall of Science than on the parish church, or even the revivalist’s chapel. On the contrary, it is my desire here to penetrate past the superficial oddities of Mr. Shaw’s dramatic experiment, and consider whether the idea itself is in fact as sane as it is certainly serious. Mr. Shaw has suffered as a subject of criticism from two classes of critics. The first are those who say they do not know what he means, and think it necessary to infer that he means nothing. The second are those who think they do know what he means, and think it necessary to agree with it. Few people seem to see that it is quite possible to understand it pretty completely and disagree with it altogether. But, as a matter of fact, it is only by taking it seriously that anybody can disagree with it seriously. The man who says that Shaw’s play is all nonsense is really lending valuable support to the man who says it is all sense. By confessing his inability to make anything of it, he is precluding himself from arguing with the man who makes everything of it. He is like a man who should defend Christianity against Renan’s “Vie de Jesu” by saying he thanked God he could not read the lingo. Or he is like a man who should reply to a detailed political denunciation by saying that the fellow gabbled too fast for him to follow. It would be impossible to pay a more complete tribute to the truth of a philosophy than to say that nobody understands it except the few people who have found it to be true. It would be impossible to pay Mr. Shaw a more complete compliment than to suggest that he mystifies the stupid and convinces the wise. Yet that is exactly the impression that is necessarily left by merely sneering at the eccentricity or extravagance or the extraordinary length or any other fantastic but merely external feature of the play like “Back to Methuselah.” I have, therefore, always tried to do in criticisms what Mr. Shaw himself does in prefaces, and discussed the doctrine which is the backbone of the whole business. For Mr. Bernard Shaw, of all men in the world, leaves the critics the least right to say they do not know what he means; for he elaborately explains it beforehand. Alone among the most fantastic fabulists, he not only adorns the fable with moral, but he actually puts the moral before the fable.
The preface to this particular play deals first with a more particular point; about which Mr. Shaw seems to me completely to prove his case. It is that the Darwinian version of evolution is, in the most emphatic sense of the phrase, not like life. It is impossible to believe that life has been so completely separated from will as it is implied in the notion of natural selection producing all the varieties of nature. It is far too much of a fortuitous concourse of animals like a fortuitous concourse of atoms. In that sense, every chapter of the “Origin of Species” may be precisely described as a chapter of accidents. Natural selection is the most unnatural thing we can conceive. It is an eternal coincidence. But it is not only that the natural selection is not natural at all; it is the whole point of it that it is not selection at all. Nobody selects; and nothing cannot select. It seems to me in the largest and most luminous sense a matter of commonsense to say that, if there was not a clear design from above, then there was some sort of design from below; and it is quite possible, of course, that there was both. All this preliminary part of the preface and the argument is sound and on solid ground; because it is dealing with a definite theory and giving reasons for differing from the theory. In other words, it is trying to do in the case of Darwin what I am trying to do in the case of Shaw.
Mr. Shaw’s notion is not meant to be nonsensical, but it is nonsensical; not as a term of abuse, but in the exact sense in which I have said that most sensible people would have called the modern talk about pragmatism and parallelism nonsensical. Any rational person, and especially any rational person, would have called it irrational. Any sceptic, from Lucretius or Lucian to Hume and Huxley, would have thought it far more rational to say that the world was coming to an end in a hundred years than to say that the life of a man was not coming to an end for three hundred years. The mere scale or scope of the modern prophecies would have seemed utterly unbalanced and bewildering to all the philosophies of civilized history. I think they would be right; but not merely because of anything externally extravagant about the scale or scope. What is unnatural about this philosophy is that it will not accept the only norm it can ever get; that which Aristotle called the measure of all things. A good and happy humanity is, humanly speaking, the idea by which we test political and social ideas; it is a test; it is in that sense the ideal. This futurist religion will not accept it as normal, and goes forth hunting for a new normal that it can never find. It can never find it because it can never fix it. It is obvious, of course, that a permanent ideal is absolutely necessary to anything like progress or reform. You cannot reform what is eternally formless; and you cannot march towards what is always moving about. What is the good of the progressive making certain that the children of the future shall have better boots, when the prophet is already saying that they will have no feet? It may seem a crazy comparison to say that children will have no feet. But it is not half so crazy as saying that people will have no children. And it actually is one part of this futurist scheme that the new generation will be born mature, without passing through childhood. That is an excellent working model of the whole issue. To us a world without children would not be a better world, but a very much worse world. It would not be an impossible Utopia, but simply an intolerable nightmare. And this is simply because we have kept in view, what the evolutionary lunatics have lost sight of, that there can be nothing more ideal that the ideal; and the only thing that affects humanity as an ideal at all is that which is fully human in being divine. For some of us it is fixed by a divine humanity, and even by a divine child.
The Persecution of Religion
The Persecution of Religion
by G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News March 8, 1924
(Source: G. K. Chesterton, Collected Works, Volume xxxiii, The Illustrated London News 1923-1925, Ignatius Press, 1990, pp. 286-290)
Most of us feel something rather arresting, not to say alarming, about the case of the man who was locked up in a lunatic asylum for eight years for being religious, or for taking a reasonable interest in the word “parallelogram,” and the idea of the end of the world. The persecution of science by religion is something of which we hear a good deal, and a good deal more than is historically accurate. But, in any case, it has pretty well come to an end. The persecution of religion by science has relatively, perhaps, only begun; but it is already at work, in we know not how many obscure cases of pedantry and cruelty. The mystics are very likely to be the martyrs when the psychologists become the kings. But there is involved a paradox that is still more peculiar. It is not merely that anything religious may be persecuted on the ground that it is not rational. It is also that anything irrational may be tolerated so long as it is also irreligious. It is only lunacy to assert religion; it is no longer lunacy to deny reason. If it were, all the professors of pragmatism would be locked up. The very incidents in this case afford an illustration. A man may be represented as mad and as making a mystical riddle of the word “parallelogram.” But a man is not regarded as mad because he says that parallel lines always meet. Our fathers would have called him a rank, raving madman; denying the self-evident and uttering a contradiction in terms. We only call him a mathematician of the newer school of relativity or the fourth dimension. The man who said: “Two and two may make five in the fixed stars” was a lunatic; and none the less a lunatic for being a literary man. I willingly admit that men of science have not a monopoly of this mental breakdown. But certainly the man who could talk as if the stars were fixed, and the numbers unfixed, was suffering from a complete mental breakdown. It is not half so crazy to expect the end of the world to come soon as to expect the Superman to come soon. Yet how many earnest evolutionists in our time have written gravely as if the Superman was to be expected next week! Things do come to an end; and a thing designed is generally reviewed by the designer when it has come to an end. A man planting a rhododendron bush sees it bloom and wither and pronounces on the experiment; and there is nothing irrational in a day of judgement, assuming a design. But there is nothing in the world to show that a rhododendron all by itself will sprout into a super-rhododendron all the colors of the rainbow, merely because that would be a superior plant. The Superman was simply and solely a phantom called out of the void by the imagination of a lunatic; a quite literal lunatic named Nietzche. Yet how vivid that utterly unreasonable vision became for many of our wavering and weak-minded generation! And the strangest thing of all is that it was some of the best brains that were thus bewitched. They also have their word “parallelogram,” like the blessed word “Mesopotamia”; but, while few soldiers want to go back to Mesopotamia, there are evidently sages who want to go back to Methuselah.
La Persecuzione della Religione
La Persecuzione della Religione
di G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, 8 marzo 1924
(Fonte: G. K. Chesterton, Collected Works, Volume xxxiii, The Illustrated London News 1923-1925, Ignatius Press, 1990, pp. 286-290)
I più di noi provano qualcosa di piuttosto sconcertante, per non dire allarmante, riguardo al caso dell’uomo che fu rinchiuso in un manicomio per otto anni per il fatto di essere religioso, o per aver preso un ragionevole interesse alla parola “parallelogramma” e all’idea della fine del mondo. Della persecuzione della scienza da parte della religione sentiamo parlare parecchio, e assai più di quanto sia storicamente esatto. Ma, in ogni caso, essa è praticamente giunta al termine. La persecuzione della religione da parte della scienza è, relativamente, forse solo cominciata; ma è già all’opera, in chissà quanti oscuri casi di pedanteria e crudeltà. I mistici saranno assai probabilmente i martiri quando gli psicologi diverranno i re. Ma vi è implicato un paradosso ancora più singolare. Non è soltanto che qualunque cosa religiosa possa essere perseguitata con la scusa che non è razionale. È anche che qualunque cosa irrazionale può essere tollerata purché sia anche irreligiosa. È soltanto follia affermare la religione; non è più follia negare la ragione. Se lo fosse, tutti i professori di pragmatismo verrebbero rinchiusi. Gli stessi episodi di questo caso ne offrono un’illustrazione. Un uomo può essere presentato come pazzo e come uno che fa un mistico indovinello della parola “parallelogramma.” Ma un uomo non è considerato pazzo perché dice che le rette parallele si incontrano sempre. I nostri padri l’avrebbero chiamato un vero e proprio pazzo furioso; uno che nega l’evidenza di sé stessa e pronuncia una contraddizione in termini. Noi lo chiamiamo soltanto un matematico della nuova scuola della relatività o della quarta dimensione. L’uomo che disse: “Due più due possono fare cinque nelle stelle fisse” era un lunatico; e non meno lunatico per il fatto di essere un letterato. Ammetto volentieri che gli uomini di scienza non hanno il monopolio di questo cedimento mentale. Ma di certo l’uomo che poteva parlare come se le stelle fossero fisse, e i numeri non fissi, soffriva di un completo cedimento mentale. Non è nemmeno lontanamente folle aspettarsi che la fine del mondo giunga presto quanto aspettarsi che il Superuomo giunga presto. Eppure quanti solerti evoluzionisti ai nostri tempi hanno scritto gravemente come se il Superuomo fosse da attendersi la settimana prossima! Le cose giungono a una fine; e una cosa progettata viene generalmente riesaminata dal progettista quando è giunta alla fine. Un uomo che pianta un cespuglio di rododendro lo vede fiorire e appassire e si pronuncia sull’esperimento; e non vi è nulla di irrazionale in un giorno del giudizio, presupposto un disegno. Ma non vi è nulla al mondo che mostri che un rododendro, tutto da sé, spunterà in un super-rododendro di tutti i colori dell’arcobaleno, per il solo fatto che quella sarebbe una pianta superiore. Il Superuomo era semplicemente e unicamente un fantasma evocato dal vuoto dall’immaginazione di un lunatico; un lunatico del tutto letterale di nome Nietzsche. Eppure quanto vivida divenne quella visione del tutto irragionevole per molti della nostra vacillante e debole generazione! E la cosa più strana di tutte è che furono alcuni tra i migliori cervelli a essere così stregati. Anch’essi hanno la loro parola “parallelogramma”, come la benedetta parola “Mesopotamia”; ma, mentre pochi soldati desiderano tornare in Mesopotamia, vi sono evidentemente saggi che desiderano tornare a Matusalemme.
I need hardly say that I am not arguing that Mr. Bernard Shaw has a tile loose; I am only pointing out that there are far more tiles loose on the Hall of Science than on the parish church, or even the revivalist’s chapel. On the contrary, it is my desire here to penetrate past the superficial oddities of Mr. Shaw’s dramatic experiment, and consider whether the idea itself is in fact as sane as it is certainly serious. Mr. Shaw has suffered as a subject of criticism from two classes of critics. The first are those who say they do not know what he means, and think it necessary to infer that he means nothing. The second are those who think they do know what he means, and think it necessary to agree with it. Few people seem to see that it is quite possible to understand it pretty completely and disagree with it altogether. But, as a matter of fact, it is only by taking it seriously that anybody can disagree with it seriously. The man who says that Shaw’s play is all nonsense is really lending valuable support to the man who says it is all sense. By confessing his inability to make anything of it, he is precluding himself from arguing with the man who makes everything of it. He is like a man who should defend Christianity against Renan’s “Vie de Jesu” by saying he thanked God he could not read the lingo. Or he is like a man who should reply to a detailed political denunciation by saying that the fellow gabbled too fast for him to follow. It would be impossible to pay a more complete tribute to the truth of a philosophy than to say that nobody understands it except the few people who have found it to be true. It would be impossible to pay Mr. Shaw a more complete compliment than to suggest that he mystifies the stupid and convinces the wise. Yet that is exactly the impression that is necessarily left by merely sneering at the eccentricity or extravagance or the extraordinary length or any other fantastic but merely external feature of the play like “Back to Methuselah.” I have, therefore, always tried to do in criticisms what Mr. Shaw himself does in prefaces, and discussed the doctrine which is the backbone of the whole business. For Mr. Bernard Shaw, of all men in the world, leaves the critics the least right to say they do not know what he means; for he elaborately explains it beforehand. Alone among the most fantastic fabulists, he not only adorns the fable with moral, but he actually puts the moral before the fable.
The preface to this particular play deals first with a more particular point; about which Mr. Shaw seems to me completely to prove his case. It is that the Darwinian version of evolution is, in the most emphatic sense of the phrase, not like life. It is impossible to believe that life has been so completely separated from will as it is implied in the notion of natural selection producing all the varieties of nature. It is far too much of a fortuitous concourse of animals like a fortuitous concourse of atoms. In that sense, every chapter of the “Origin of Species” may be precisely described as a chapter of accidents. Natural selection is the most unnatural thing we can conceive. It is an eternal coincidence. But it is not only that the natural selection is not natural at all; it is the whole point of it that it is not selection at all. Nobody selects; and nothing cannot select. It seems to me in the largest and most luminous sense a matter of commonsense to say that, if there was not a clear design from above, then there was some sort of design from below; and it is quite possible, of course, that there was both. All this preliminary part of the preface and the argument is sound and on solid ground; because it is dealing with a definite theory and giving reasons for differing from the theory. In other words, it is trying to do in the case of Darwin what I am trying to do in the case of Shaw.
Non ho quasi bisogno di dire che non sto sostenendo che al signor Bernard Shaw manchi una tegola; sto soltanto rilevando che vi sono assai più tegole sconnesse sulla Hall of Science che sulla chiesa parrocchiale, o perfino sulla cappella del revivalista. Al contrario, è mio desiderio, qui, di penetrare oltre le stranezze superficiali dell’esperimento drammatico del signor Shaw, e di considerare se l’idea in sé sia di fatto tanto sensata quanto è certamente seria. Il signor Shaw ha sofferto, come oggetto di critica, per opera di due classi di critici. I primi sono coloro che dicono di non sapere cosa egli intenda, e reputano necessario dedurne che non intende nulla. I secondi sono coloro che credono di sapere cosa egli intenda, e reputano necessario concordarvi. Poche persone sembrano vedere che è del tutto possibile comprenderlo assai pienamente e dissentirne del tutto. Ma, in verità, è solo prendendolo sul serio che si può dissentirne sul serio. L’uomo che dice che la commedia di Shaw è tutta un’assurdità presta in realtà prezioso sostegno all’uomo che dice che è tutta sensata. Confessando la propria incapacità di ricavarne alcunché, si preclude la possibilità di discutere con l’uomo che ne ricava tutto. È come uno che difendesse il Cristianesimo contro la “Vie de Jésus” di Renan dicendo che ringraziava Dio di non saper leggere quel gergo. Oppure è come uno che rispondesse a una dettagliata denuncia politica dicendo che quel tale farfugliava troppo in fretta perché egli potesse seguirlo. Sarebbe impossibile rendere un omaggio più completo alla verità di una filosofia che dire che nessuno la comprende salvo le poche persone che l’hanno trovata vera. Sarebbe impossibile rendere al signor Shaw un complimento più completo che suggerire ch’egli mistifica gli stupidi e convince i saggi. Eppure è esattamente l’impressione che necessariamente si lascia limitandosi a sogghignare sull’eccentricità o sulla stravaganza o sulla straordinaria lunghezza o su qualunque altro tratto fantastico ma meramente esteriore di una commedia come “Torniamo a Matusalemme”. Ho pertanto sempre cercato di fare, nelle mie critiche, ciò che il signor Shaw stesso fa nelle prefazioni, e di discutere la dottrina che è la spina dorsale dell’intera faccenda. Poiché il signor Bernard Shaw, fra tutti gli uomini del mondo, lascia ai critici il minor diritto di dire che non sanno cosa egli intenda; ché lo spiega minuziosamente in anticipo. Solo fra i più fantastici favolisti, egli non solo adorna la favola con la morale, ma mette addirittura la morale prima della favola.
La prefazione a questa particolare commedia tratta anzitutto un punto più particolare, sul quale il signor Shaw mi pare provi completamente la sua tesi. Ossia che la versione darwiniana dell’evoluzione, nel senso più enfatico dell’espressione, non somiglia alla vita. È impossibile credere che la vita sia stata così completamente separata dalla volontà come è implicito nella nozione della selezione naturale che produrrebbe tutte le varietà della natura. È fin troppo un fortuito concorso di animali come un fortuito concorso di atomi. In tal senso, ogni capitolo dell‘“Origine delle specie” può essere descritto con precisione come un capitolo di incidenti. La selezione naturale è la cosa più innaturale che possiamo concepire. È una coincidenza eterna. Ma non è soltanto che la selezione naturale non sia affatto naturale; il punto è tutto qui: che non è affatto selezione. Nessuno seleziona; e il nulla non può selezionare. Mi pare, nel senso più ampio e luminoso, cosa di buon senso dire che, se non vi era un chiaro disegno dall’alto, allora vi era qualche sorta di disegno dal basso; ed è del tutto possibile, s’intende, che vi fossero entrambi. Tutta questa parte preliminare della prefazione e dell’argomentazione è solida e su terreno saldo, perché ha a che fare con una teoria definita e adduce ragioni per differire dalla teoria. In altre parole, tenta di fare nel caso di Darwin ciò che io tento di fare nel caso di Shaw.
Mr. Shaw’s notion is not meant to be nonsensical, but it is nonsensical; not as a term of abuse, but in the exact sense in which I have said that most sensible people would have called the modern talk about pragmatism and parallelism nonsensical. Any rational person, and especially any rational person, would have called it irrational. Any sceptic, from Lucretius or Lucian to Hume and Huxley, would have thought it far more rational to say that the world was coming to an end in a hundred years than to say that the life of a man was not coming to an end for three hundred years. The mere scale or scope of the modern prophecies would have seemed utterly unbalanced and bewildering to all the philosophies of civilized history. I think they would be right; but not merely because of anything externally extravagant about the scale or scope. What is unnatural about this philosophy is that it will not accept the only norm it can ever get; that which Aristotle called the measure of all things. A good and happy humanity is, humanly speaking, the idea by which we test political and social ideas; it is a test; it is in that sense the ideal. This futurist religion will not accept it as normal, and goes forth hunting for a new normal that it can never find. It can never find it because it can never fix it. It is obvious, of course, that a permanent ideal is absolutely necessary to anything like progress or reform. You cannot reform what is eternally formless; and you cannot march towards what is always moving about. What is the good of the progressive making certain that the children of the future shall have better boots, when the prophet is already saying that they will have no feet? It may seem a crazy comparison to say that children will have no feet. But it is not half so crazy as saying that people will have no children. And it actually is one part of this futurist scheme that the new generation will be born mature, without passing through childhood. That is an excellent working model of the whole issue. To us a world without children would not be a better world, but a very much worse world. It would not be an impossible Utopia, but simply an intolerable nightmare. And this is simply because we have kept in view, what the evolutionary lunatics have lost sight of, that there can be nothing more ideal that the ideal; and the only thing that affects humanity as an ideal at all is that which is fully human in being divine. For some of us it is fixed by a divine humanity, and even by a divine child.
L’idea del signor Shaw non vuol essere insensata, ma è insensata; non come termine d’insulto, ma nel senso esatto in cui ho detto che le persone più assennate avrebbero chiamato insensato il moderno chiacchiericcio sul pragmatismo e sul parallelismo. Qualunque persona razionale, e specialmente qualunque persona razionale, l’avrebbe chiamato irrazionale. Qualunque scettico, da Lucrezio o Luciano fino a Hume e Huxley, avrebbe ritenuto assai più razionale dire che il mondo sarebbe finito entro cento anni, che dire che la vita di un uomo non sarebbe finita per trecento anni. La sola scala o portata delle profezie moderne sarebbe parsa del tutto squilibrata e sconcertante a tutte le filosofie della storia civile. Credo che avrebbero ragione; ma non semplicemente per qualcosa di esteriormente stravagante nella scala o nella portata. Ciò che è innaturale in questa filosofia è che non vuole accettare l’unica norma che possa mai ottenere: quella che Aristotele chiamava la misura di tutte le cose. Un’umanità buona e felice è, umanamente parlando, l’idea con cui saggiamo le idee politiche e sociali; è un banco di prova; è in tal senso l’ideale. Questa religione futurista non vuole accettarla come norma, e va a caccia di una nuova norma che non potrà mai trovare. Non potrà mai trovarla perché non potrà mai fissarla. È ovvio, s’intende, che un ideale permanente è assolutamente necessario a qualcosa come il progresso o la riforma. Non si può riformare ciò che è eternamente informe; e non si può marciare verso ciò che è sempre in movimento. A che serve al progressista assicurarsi che i figli del futuro avranno stivali migliori, quando il profeta già va dicendo che non avranno piedi? Può parere un paragone folle dire che i bambini non avranno piedi. Ma non è nemmeno la metà tanto folle quanto dire che la gente non avrà bambini. E in effetti è una parte di questo schema futurista che la nuova generazione nascerà matura, senza passare attraverso l’infanzia. Questo è un ottimo modello di lavoro dell’intera questione. Per noi un mondo senza bambini non sarebbe un mondo migliore, ma un mondo assai peggiore. Non sarebbe un’impossibile Utopia, ma semplicemente un intollerabile incubo. E ciò semplicemente perché abbiamo tenuto in vista ciò che i lunatici dell’evoluzione hanno perso di vista: che non vi può essere nulla di più ideale dell’ideale; e l’unica cosa che tocchi l’umanità come ideale è quella che è pienamente umana in quanto divina. Per alcuni di noi essa è fissata da una divina umanità, e persino da un divino Bambino.