They're Still To Be Found

Finally, a capable spokesman steps forward to represent the perspective of faith. Recently, Boston College (a Jesuit university) put crucifixes in all 151 of its classroms which had up to that point been devoid of any religious imagery.

The process was described by some as gradual, but one faculty member deemed it a “tsunami” of religious art that appeared in classrooms over winter break. And while most discussions on this matter have been private, opinions seem to run the gamut.

In a statement provided through Dunn [the PR manager for the university], Rev. T. Frank Kennedy, chair of the committee on Christian Art, wrote: “I suppose a question might be posed to Boston College as to what purpose this Christian Art serves? In a world that is pretty successfully driven by media (imagery), ours is a response that seeks to pose the age-old invitation of Christ to enter into love--a love that is made perfect in its unselfishness. John Paul II spoke of the crucifix on September 15, 2002 saying ‘It is the sign of God, who has compassion on us, who accepts human weakness, who opens to us all, to one another, and therefore creates the relation of fraternity.’ The Pope also went on to say that though this symbol has been abused in history, it is the Christian’s duty to reclaim that symbol as an invitation to love. An invitation to love, and an invitation to faith is exactly that, an invitation. One is not required to respond, one can decline, and one can have many reasons for declining the invitation, but to imply that a Jesuit and Catholic university is not free to offer this invitation is simply an impossibility.”

I don't know about you, but I find that remarkably well said.

Read the whole article here:
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/11/bostoncollege
.

Catholic Schools Week

Thanks to the students and teachers of Prince of Peace Catholic School in Olathe and Mrs. Meyer's 4th grade class at Xavier Catholic School in Leavenworth for their care packages and notes of encouragement! There were some really thoughtful cards. My favorite, though, asked if "I had always wanted to be a priest, or whether I'd ever wanted to be something".

It's great to get a show of support from the kids in the Catholic schools. Keep up the good work, and be thankful that we aren't facing the same troubles as the Catholic Schools in Washington, D.C.

Answering Other People’s Mail

It's been a while since I've put together a sustained piece, and a recent series of moral theology classes have coincided with a long exchange in First Things over the issue of contraception, so I figgered this was as good a time as any to dive in.

If you're not familiar with Mary Eberstadt's essay in the July issue, The Vindication of Humanae Vitae, I would suggest printing it out and making your way through it. Those of you not in the habit of reading while obeying certain biological imperatives to eliminate digestive waste can consider this a personal invitation to start.

What caught my attention about this exchange was a paragraph from letter that showed up in the January issue. It raises a very reasonable question that I've encountered before. The question centers around the situation in which a couple wishes to remain faithful to the Church's teaching, and so chooses to avoid pregnancy by abstaining from sex during the wife's fertile period (the method used in NFP). The Church permits this for "grave reasons".

People of good will might then ask what exactly the difference is between artificially regulating births and using so-called "natural" methods to achieve the same end—avoiding pregnancy. The author of the letter asks,

It would seem logical that couples having intercourse [only] in the wife's infertile period are intending to prevent conception—otherwise what could be their motive? "Family planning" and "spacing of children," if legitimate ends, require careful calculations of the female menstrual cycle and avoidance of marital relations at certain times. Though the end does not justify the means, the distinction between "natural" and "artificial" contraception loses force in actual practice.

In essence, the question is: what the heck is the difference, you Jesuitical hairsplitter? Only having sex during a wife's infertile period seems just as susceptible to the objection that a couple is refusing to be "open to life".

And of course, that possibility has to be granted. A married couple abstaining from sex for the sole purpose of avoiding children fails to preserve the connection between the unitive and procreative dimensions of married sex, and commits an error similar to a couple using contraception.

So what is the solution? The letter goes on,

The Catechism of the Catholic Church seems to send a mixed message: "Each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life," and "every action which . . . proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible is intrinsically evil." Is the solution that Catholic couples may have marital intercourse only during the fertile period?

Well what have we here? A warmed-over medieval physicalism? "No kids? Then NO SEX FOR YOU!" Obviously this solution goes too far—the Church holds up marital intercourse as a legitimate good even between spouses who, in the unfolding of nature, cannot have children.

In her reply, Eberstadt is right to draw attention to the word "impossible" in the Catechism: no one using NFP wishes to render procreation impossible, whereas that is the express intention of anyone using chemical means to alter the woman's biology in such a way as to prevent even the possibility of conception (i.e. ovulation) from arising.

Our solution must lie elsewhere. I suggest that a look at Karol Wojtyla's examination of these questions in Love and Responsibility may be of assistance.

Wojtyla points out that placing contraception and NFP side-by-side as competing "methods", each of which has its relative advantages and disadvantages, is misleading from the start. If we are looking for the difference between these two using a framework of manipulation as our springboard, there will always be the possibility for an equivalence between the two. Wojtyla recasts the discussion in a wholly different context: the personalistic norm.

The personalistic norm is the demand that persons are the only creatures created for their own sake, and therefore are never to be used as a means. This is the content of Jesus' commands to "love your neighbor as yourself" and to "love one another as I have loved you". This norm is to be observed in all human relationships, but most especially between those who make the commitment to love another person in the context of marriage.

This norm excludes from marriage the mutual use for sexual pleasure, and Wojtyla points out that any decision on the part of a couple to have sex despite a refusal to have any children whatsoever would reduce the marriage covenant to a selfish arrangement for mutual sexual enjoyment (p. 239).

Acceptance of the possibility of procreation in the marital relationship safeguards love and is an indispensable condition of a truly personal union. The union of persons in love does not necessarily have to be realized by way of sexual relations. But when it does take this form the personalistic value of the sexual relationship cannot be assured without willingness for parenthood (p. 230).

OK, so we can rule that out. What about couples that are open to procreation in the future?

Wojtyla argues that periodic continence—that is, occasionally refraining from sex during fertile periods—is the only way couples can keep their relationship in line with the personalistic norm. This is because engaging in periodic continence is only possible through the achievement of a certain level of the virtue of chastity.

The personalistic value of periodic continence as a method of regulating conception is evident not only in the fact that it preserves the 'naturalness' of intercourse, but even more in the fact that in the wills of the persons concerned it must be grounded in a sufficiently mature virtue. (p . 241)

Far from being a negative "turning away" from sex, chastity is the full "yes" to the whole person, including the body with its physical attractiveness, but not limited to it. One cannot imagine an unmarried couple accustomed to casual intercourse giving full assent to even their bodies (which include their fertility). Only a married couple can exercise the virtue of chastity in their sexual relationship, because only spouses have made a permanent, total commitment to one another in the sum of their personhood and have accepted the wholeness of that mutual gift with joy.

Wojtyla goes on to say that,

Continence, unless it is a virtue, is alien to love. The love of man and woman must ripen to the point where continence is possible, and continence must acquire a constructive significance for them, and become one of the factors which gives shape to their love. Only then is the 'natural method' congruent with the nature of the person: its secret lies in the practice of virtue—technique alone is no solution here (p. 242)

It follows, then, that taking a long view of a marriage, periodic continence can only be used to regulate conceptions and not to avoid them. That is, it is undertaken with a view in mind to subsequent pregnancies that are part and parcel of the fruitfulness of the love they share. Interestingly enough, the language Wojtyla uses implies that this is a decision that can be made only after they have already had one or more children. It is not just the good of the spouses that must be considered, but that of the "family"; due responsibility for the birth, care, and education of a child must be weighed in contemplating the possibility of "another" pregnancy. The implicit claim is that couples have no real right to be regulating births prior to their responsibility for their present child(ren).

I remember a conversation I had with a girlfriend over this issue. I thought it was perfectly reasonable for a couple to hold off having kids for a few years to work on their marriage, get their ducks in a row, etc. and found a few articles and quotes that seemed to back up my point. We went back and forth for a while over it. Yet there was one conversation I will not forget: she simply said that if a couple wasn't ready to have kids, they had no business being married. This was no idle speculation for her, either—she was third in a family of ten, and had spent a good portion of her adolescence and young adulthood helping to raise her younger brothers and sisters (an experience she valued immensely).

In the end, I have enough married friends who are struggling to have children (including one that has lost four little ones to miscarriage) that I've become acquainted with the particular form of anguish the cross of infertility can bring. I can't imagine it's any lighter than the difficulties of raising a little one or three (especially when reckoned alongside the real consolations a young family brings). That, of course, is not to mention my own situation as one who has forsaken a family for the sake of the kingdom. Thus, I have little patience for the extenuating arguments of those who have decided that kids just aren't part of the picture yet.

Of course, in addressing this issue, I've got to let go of that impatience and become, in the words of Paul VI, "an echo of the voice and love of the Redeemer." So often, I've heard defenses of the Church's teaching on contraception spiral into a shrill litmus test for orthodoxy, rather than a life-giving discipline that opens up new horizons in a marriage. Small wonder people aren't interested in hearing more about it. Though I hesitate to dive into the subject on a blog where I don't have any responsibilty to follow up with people (as opposed to the pulpit), it's important for me to have the chance to propose this teaching rather than impose it.

In the closing paragraphs of Humanae Vitae, Paul VI issued an appeal to all walks of life to step forward prophetically and proclaim the generosity of the Father in linking the gift of procreation to conjugal love. In particular, he encouraged married couples with the hope that the practice of this teaching confers on their love a higher human value; that, "thanks to its beneficent influence, husband and wife can fully develop their personalities and be enriched with spiritual values."

It should be a reason for all of us to rejoice that the Lord has entrusted to spouses the task of "making visible to all the holiness and sweetness of the law which unites the mutual love of husband and wife with their cooperation with the love of God, the author of human life."

Former NASA Climatology Chief Puts the Chill on Global Warming

I realize my posts have been more news-related lately, which is definitely not where I plan to continue going with this blog, but there has been some juicy stuff of late that just screams to be shared.

The latest is a public rebuke of James Hansen, the NASA scientist first responsible for breaking the man-made climate change scenario to Congress in 1988, by Dr. John Theon, his former supervisor. Hansen has been very radical and very vocal in his advocacy, but some inconvenient developments have begun to swing the prevailing winds in another direction.

“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results.”
...
Theon declared “climate models are useless.” “My own belief concerning anthropogenic climate change is that the models do not realistically simulate the climate system because there are many very important sub-grid scale processes that the models either replicate poorly or completely omit,” Theon explained. “Furthermore, some scientists have manipulated the observed data to justify their model results. In doing so, they neither explain what they have modified in the observations, nor explain how they did it. They have resisted making their work transparent so that it can be replicated independently by other scientists. This is clearly contrary to how science should be done. Thus there is no rational justification for using climate model forecasts to determine public policy,” he added.

Hansen was a noted authority in Gore's acclaimed film, "An Inconvenient Truth."

Gore faces a much different scientific climate in 2009 than the one he faced in 2006 when his film was released. According to satellite data, the Earth has cooled since Gore’s film was released, Antarctic sea ice extent has grown to record levels, sea level rise has slowed, ocean temperatures have failed to warm, and more and more scientists have publicly declared their dissent from man-made climate fears as peer-reviewed studies continue to man-made counter warming fears.

Read all this and more over at Watts Up With That.

Flashpoint

An outstanding opinion piece by actor Gary Graham is up over at Big Hollywood. He details his own irresponsibility as a college-educated free love revolutionary and the convenience of abortion for the women he kept on the side.

I had bought the whole ‘women’s rights’ thing, completely agreed with ‘the constitutional right of a woman’s freedom to choose’…and I was just fine with that. Sure took the pressure off of me, a guy, interested in sex who had been raised in the era of, “Hey, you get a girl pregnant, you marry her!” But times had changed. Now abortions could be had legally if a doctor determined the life of the mother was in danger. Girls in college told me what a joke that was. They’d go in to see a doctor, tell him they’re pregnant, and the conversation went like this:

Doctor: “You’re feeling suicidal?” (hint hint, wink nudge.)

Girl: “Oh. Yeah… suicidal. I’m feeling suicidal.”

Doctor: “All right, then.”

Abortion as a method of birth control became the norm. I knew a few girls who had had as many as five of them by the time they were twenty-five. And they seemed fine on it…mostly because everyone around them was telling them that they should feel fine about it.

...

Jump forward thirty years and Nancy Pelosi tells us yesterday that ‘family planning’ is now a fiscal responsibility to ‘reduce costs.’ Her defenders will say that NO, she’s talking about condoms and sex education. But anyone with a mind who’s been around for a while knows that ‘family planning’ is code for abortion. She is asking for 200 million dollars for Family Planning Services to ‘expand the economy.’ These are taxpayer dollars, dontcha know. Your money. She says states are in terrible fiscal crisis and it’s ‘part of what we do for childrens’ health and education’…” I’m trying to figure out how ripping an unborn child from it’s womb is aiding in it’s health or education, but maybe I’m missing something here.

...

Our willingness to tolerate such a holocaust says volumes of how our entire culture has been coarsened. How life itself has been cheapened. We are told to have sex any time we feel the urge. Condoms are handed out in grade schools. Promiscuity is not only condoned, it’s tacitly encouraged. Illegitimacy has enslaved an entire underclass of our citizens, relegating them to government assistance for a lifetime, bankrupting cities, and holding an entire subculture down in dependent despair. But if you should get pregnant and it’s just not a ‘convenient’ time for you, don’t worry, there are Family Planning Services, funded, thanks to the likes of Nancy Pelosi, by your tax dollars. That inconvenient fetus can be surgically ripped from its uterine moorings, ground up and tossed into the trash like so much garbage. Problem solved, and the mother can resume her egocentric lifestyle. But the scars on that woman’s soul will never quite heal. I’m a man, but I’ve got them on mine.

If you could only imagine the difficulty these opinions will cause this man as a part of Hollywood. It's a good reminder that our prayers, which seem to be launched into the silence, never to surface again, find their way to their appointed place. Keep them coming.

(Via Church of the Masses)

Oh My Goodness.

Thanks be to Change.

The Daily Show is On To Something.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Changefest '09 - Obama's Inaugural Speech

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Free Lecture!

Enthusiasts of the Norwegian author Sigrid Undset will enjoy a short lecture by Bernt Ivar Eidsvig, Bishop of Oslo, delivered at my alma mater in November of this past year. The download, a .zip file containing eight .mp3 files, can be found at the link below until the 28th of January. After that, you will need to contact me directly with your email address and I will re-post the file.

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/644573742/f6941a3ef8c86d5624549e2d6397577c

Please post your thoughts in the comments box below by clicking on the "__ comments" link. I hope to have a post up soon.

Father Richard John Neuhaus Has Gone To His Reward

May he spend his eternity doing good on earth.

Lux Perpetua Luceat Eum
1936-2009

Reality Is Not Episodic

It's recently become clear to me why television is boring.

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death has gotten me thinking about television and in what ways it's affecting culture. He traces the shift in public discourse over the years in which the printed word was the sole medium available, through the rise in the telegraph, to the present day in which the medium of TV has gained ascendancy (the book was written in the mid-80s so I would imagine he'd have something to say about the internet … especially bloggers). His motivation in writing is simply this: television has become an uncritically accepted reality in our world. Why is that, and how did it happen?

I'll leave a treatment of that question to a later post, but I'm going to go ahead and tell you why television bores me.

Most television shows operate on a formula that has been proven to attract viewers, fit within given limits imposed by the medium, and provide opportunities for the insertion of lucrative advertising. This formula runs something like this:

1 Situation
2 Conflict / unknown is introduced
3 Situation is thereby altered
4 Process of repair / reconstruction / discovery
5 Situation is restored.

1 and 5 are the entry and exit points for the show. They must be identical in order to allow the next episode to pick up at essentially the same situation. 2-4 are the "raw material" in which characters are revealed and developed. Because of the nature of the medium, no conflict or unknown can be introduced that cannot be resolved in 22 or 46 minutes (the actual viewing time of a half-hour or one hour show after commercials are removed). The exception to this is the season finale, in which one is allowed to leave the audience hanging for the season premiere to follow some months later. Any tension, ambiguity, or confusion must not persist beyond when the credits begin to roll. If more consequential or complex material is included (say, a developing romance between main characters), it is unfolded in manageable chunks, and sufficient innuendos are placed so as to draw the regular viewer into the mounting tension that in all likelihood will be satisfactorily resolved.

Characters, to the degree that they have any interior life at all, do not reflect on a given conflict / unknown beyond the time constraints of an episode (think Doogie Howser's diary). This reflection is rarely carried out in a sustained fashion, and is tolerated only to the degree that it advances the process of repair / reconstruction / discovery. Characters do not advance in age or wisdom unless they have the misfortune of being children, in which case writers come up with appropriately altered conflicts / unknowns commensurate with the unavoidable physical development in their actors.

Depending on the nature and genre of the show, the details change, but the basic format stays the same. It's discernible in some way, shape, or form in every other entertainment show out there, whether past or present. The fact that certain shows currently deviate slightly from this formula (Battlestar Galactica, Lost, etc.) and have received great acclaim is the exception that proves the rule.

What bores me about this is not just the repetitive structure, but the incredibly narrow slice of dramatic material available for treatment in this 22/46 minute window. Someone gets fired, someone gets restless, someone finds a dead body, someone wants to have sex with someone else, someone gets in trouble at school, someone buys a motorcycle, etc. etc. Nothing's inherently wrong with this way of packaging entertainment. I suppose on some level it's perfectly legitimate. But at what point do we lose contact with the bigger things? I happen to be blessed to live in a community that spends very little time (relatively speaking) watching TV; what about the rest of the world? Television is so fundamental a right that the government is subsidizing the transition from analog to digital signals by offering to purchase receivers for those who cannot afford to buy them. There is no one too poor not to have television!

It's not too far of a stretch to say that most of the world lives in the world of television, and takes it utterly for granted. Specifically, our entertainment has been so restricted to television and movies that it's hard to think of a popular form of entertainment that has not been affected by it in some way. Even pop fiction is written and published with the above format in mind (think of the reactions to The DaVinci Code, and how few of the chapters were more than a page or three long).

Some might say that all the above criticisms are precisely why television is so enjoyable: ready-made, easily digestible packets of entertainment and escape that are always ready for a quick excursion from the humdrum of daily life. Who says entertainment is supposed to be something that takes work? Why can't it be a good thing to sit back and rest the mind for an hour or two with some old, familiar faces?

The point isn't so much about "unwinding" or not, but the question of whether we are still capable of being stretched beyond facile and insipid approaches to human existence. "Sure," Mike Teavee chirps in between clicks of the remote. "I just don't want my TV doing it for me."

A man wiser than I interjects, "We all build our castles in the air, Mike. The problem is when we try to live in them."

Great fiction shows us not how to conduct our behavior but how to feel. Eventually, it may show us how to face our feelings and face our actions and to have new inklings about what they mean.

Eudora Welty

Various and Sundry Engagements With Matters of Enlightenment

A few hours of desultory reading on the web can either be fuel for contemplation or a complete waste of time that calls into question one's character and sanity. Happily, this morning can be declared the former.

First Things has been on a roll with the daily article of late. R.R. Reno discusses some thoughts on how scientific discoveries are received by ordinary people, and sheds a tear of compassion for the well-funded, highly educated army of researchers whose labors do little to influence public opinion on matters that touch on basic human experience. The matter in question? Brain science, and the conviction among researchers that impending discoveries will put the last nail in the coffin of freedom (and hence moral responsibility). A recent study from the University of Utah suggests that regardless of the scientific consensus, certain basic convictions just won't be eradicated. Reno does a fine job of reining in our view that science has the last word on the humanum.

When a scientist reports that action x can occur if and only if there is an antecedent brain state y, which in turn requires brain state z, then he is identifying y and z as necessary condition for and not the causes of x. We all know that what counts as a free choice is not a mental moment suspended in ether, unconnected and uninfluenced by emotions, habits, and intuitions. The ability of science to explain and illuminate the webs of interconnection does not dislodge our deeper intuition that our deeply embedded, highly influenced, and profoundly physical mental lives are somehow genuinely our own—and somehow our responsibility to discipline and cultivate.

Reno's appraisal of the general reluctance to swallow massively counterintuitive scientific claims sits well with the perspectives of another FT contributor (and a favorite author of mine) Stephen Barr. I plowed through his Modern Physics and Ancient Faith on the exercise bike this summer, which I highly recommend to enthusiasts in the field of the philosophy of science. Dabblers might be more suited to print out an article that presents the thesis of the book in summary form, entitled "Retelling the Story of Science", and park themselves in an easy chair on a winter morning with a cup of hot coffee and a pencil. In it, Barr nails down five areas of scientific progress that have actually undermined the Enlightenment aspirations to eradicate religious perspectives on the world. The fourth and fifth these areas of discovery touch on the issues outlined by Reno above, but in a very different light. Barr takes up the favorite activity of ideological materialism, "debunking myths," and turns it back on its practitioners:

Here the scientist debunks himself. Here all the grand intellectual adventure of science ends with the statement that there is no intellectual adventure. For the mind of man has looked into itself and seen nothing there except complex chemistry, nerve impulses, and synapses firing. That, at least, is what the materialist tells us that science has seen. However, the story is really not so simple. Here again the plot has twisted. Two of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century cast considerable doubt upon, and some would say refute, the contention that the mind of man can be explained as a mere biochemical machine.

What might those discoveries be? Read the article and find out.

On a note related to some thoughts on relativism earlier, I came across this interesting video of Penn Gillette's reaction to the gift of a Bible from one of his fans after a show (link via Creative Minority Report). A short encounter with a genuinely good Christian man had an obviously powerful effect upon him.

What is most interesting is the way he countextualized the simple gift of a small Gideon Bible. "How much do you have to hate someone to believe everlasting life is possible, and not tell them that?" Contra the popular conception of evangelism as judgment and condemnation, this self-proclaimed atheist accepted what this man was offering: the gift of God's love, despite the personal discomfort making such an offer would probably bring him. That offer worked on a level more profoundly than the merely intellectual:

I know there's no God, and one polite person living his life well doesn't change that. But I'll tell you, he was a very, very, very good man.

We have here something akin to what made Christianity such a popular religion in the first place. Benedict has said that

the conversion of the ancient world to Christianity was not the result of any planned activity on the part of the Church but the fruit of the proof of the faith as it became visible in the life of Christians and of the community of the Church … The Church’s community of life invited people to share in this life in which was revealed the truth from which this kind of life arose. On the other hand the apostasy of the modern age rests on the disappearance of the verification of faith in the life of Christians. In this is to be seen the great responsibility of Christians today. They should be reference points of faith as people who know about God, should in their lives demonstrate faith as truth, and should thus become signposts for others.

We have, in this short, unpolished video, an account of just what effect a life lived in fidelity to truth can have on unbelievers.

Perhaps it also gives the lie to a common saying that, in my opinion, is much abused: preach the Gospel always; when necessary, use words. A true statement in itself, but perhaps it's necessary more often than we've led ourselves to believe.

Some Light Holiday Reading

Nothing says "Christmas" to me like a short essay on Jewish perspectives on marriage vis-a-vis the polymorphous ancient pagan practices. For your enjoyment.

Especially my classmates in Special Moral II.

On an unrelated note, I snagged a webcam for my folks for Christmas so if you're up for it, look me up on Skype.

A blessed Christmas season to you all!

In Case You Thought That's All There Is To Say

The way multicultural-speak has completely saturated reflection on globalization, you'd think the only path to maturity as a human person within the body of Christ was coming to grips with the encounter of world cultures. And you'd be right, as long as you were aware it was a necessary but insufficient dimension of the process of purification that constitutes this life.

What I mean is that there is another equally important discipline to be held in tension with stretching oneself to swallow the broadness of the world. There is more to life in cultivating a vastness to the point of containing contradictory multitudes, as Whitman did. We must never lose sight of the wonder of living, in all its humbleness and unremarkability. The great "apostle" of this way of life is none other than the great Chesterton, who in his reverence for "beef, noise, the Church, vulgarity, and beer" offers an "alternative lifestyle" to the continent-hoppers.

I was reminded of this by a few casual remarks made during our multicultural presentation (referenced in the previous post) with regard to Rudyard Kipling, that author of such wide and varied influence absorbed by way of British colonization. Chesterton points this out in his introduction to a series of essays known as Tremendous Trifles, and in prophetic counterpoint to the globalization that we now experience, set up a sign of contradiction: a portly, golden-mouthed Renaissance man who saw no reason to set out beyond the confines of his own particularity. That is, he saw the antithesis to Kipling in no one other than himself.

Apart from pointing out the great value of paying attention to literature and the mutual influence it exerts and receives from culture, Chesterton points out to us from a vantage point nearly a century away certain broad features of our own time we fail to discern for our proximity to them.

I give you the pleasure of reading the (short) essay for yourself.

Once upon a time there were two little boys who lived chiefly in the front garden, because their villa was a model one. The front garden was about the same size as the dinner table; it consisted of four strips of gravel, a square of turf with some mysterious pieces of cork standing up in the middle and one flower bed with a row of red daisies. One morning while they were at play in these romantic grounds, a passing individual, probably the milkman, leaned over the railing and engaged them in philosophical conversation. The boys, whom we will call Paul and Peter, were at least sharply interested in his remarks. For the milkman (who was, I need say, a fairy) did his duty in that state of life by offering them in the regulation manner anything that they chose to ask for. And Paul closed with the offer with a business-like abruptness, explaining that he had long wished to be a giant that he might stride across continents and oceans and visit Niagara or the Himalayas in an afternoon dinner stroll. The milkman producing a wand from his breast pocket, waved it in a hurried and perfunctory manner; and in an instant the model villa with its front garden was like a tiny doll's house at Paul's colossal feet. He went striding away with his head above the clouds to visit Niagara and the Himalayas.
But when he came to the Himalayas, he found they were quite small and silly-looking, like the little cork rockery in the garden; and when he found Niagara it was no bigger than the tap turned on in the bathroom. He wandered round the world for several minutes trying to find something really large and finding everything small, till in sheer boredom he lay down on four or five prairies and fell asleep. Unfortunately his head was just outside the hut of an intellectual backwoodsman who came out of it at that moment with an axe in one hand and a book of Neo-Catholic Philosophy in the other. The man looked at the book and then at the giant, and then at the book again. And in the book it said, "It can be maintained that the evil of pride consists in being out of proportion to the universe." So the backwoodsman put down his book, took his axe and, working eight hours a day for about a week, cut the giant's head off; and there was an end of him.

Such is the severe yet salutary history of Paul. But Peter, oddly enough, made exactly the opposite request; he said he had long wished to be a pigmy about half an inch high; and of course he immediately became one. When the transformation was over he found himself in the midst of an immense plain, covered with a tall green jungle and above which, at intervals, rose strange trees each with a head like the sun in symbolic pictures, with gigantic rays of silver and a huge heart of gold. Toward the middle of this prairie stood up a mountain of such romantic and impossible shape, yet of such stony height and dominance, that it looked like some incident of the end of the world. And far away on the faint horizon he could see the line of another forest, taller and yet more mystical, of a terrible crimson colour, like a forest on fire for ever. He set out on his adventures across that coloured plain; and he has not come to the end of it yet.

Such is the story of Peter and Paul, which contains all the highest qualities of a modern fairy tale, including that of being wholly unfit for children; and indeed the motive with which I have introduced it is not childish, but rather full of subtlety and reaction. It is in fact the almost desperate motive of excusing or palliating the pages that follow. Peter and Paul are the two primary influences upon European literature to-day; and I may be permitted to put my own preference in its most favourable shape, even if I can only do it by what little girls call telling a story.

I need scarcely say that I am the pigmy. The only excuse for the scraps that follow is that they show what can be achieved with a commonplace existence and the sacred spectacles of exaggeration. The other great literary theory, that which is roughly represented in England by Mr. Rudyard Kipling, is that we moderns are to regain the primal zest by sprawling all over the world growing used to travel and geographical variety, being at home everywhere, that is being at home nowhere. Let it be granted that a man in a frock coat is a heartrending sight; and the two alternative methods still remain. Mr. Kipling's school advises us to go to Central Africa in order to find a man without a frock coat. The school to which I belong suggests that we should stare steadily at the man until we see the man inside the frock coat. If we stare at him long enough he may even be moved to take off his coat to us; and that is a far greater compliment than his taking off his hat. In other words, we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up their meaning and fulfil their mysterious purpose. The purpose of the Kipling literature is to show how many extraordinary things a man may see if he is active and strides from continent to continent like the giant in my tale. But the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing. For this purpose I have taken the laziest person of my acquaintance, that is myself; and made an idle diary of such odd things as I have fallen over by accident, in walking in a very limited area at a very indolent pace. If anyone says that these are very small affairs talked about in very big language, I can only gracefully compliment him upon seeing the joke. If anyone says that I am making mountains out of molehills, I confess with pride that it is so. I can imagine no more successful and productive form of manufacture than that of making mountains out of molehills. But I would add this not unimportant fact, that molehills are mountains; one has only to become a pigmy like Peter to discover that.

I have my doubts about all this real value in mountaineering, in getting to the top of everything and overlooking everything. Satan was the most celebrated of Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth. But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness, but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look like insects at his feet. It is from the valley that things look large; it is from the level that things look high; I am a child of the level and have no need of that celebrated Alpine guide. I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help; but I will not lift up my carcass to the hills, unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything is in an attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.