G.K. Chesterton--Science and the Savages

This short essay from Chesterton's book Heretics deals with the fallacies of scientific anthropology and the likelihood of myth becoming fact. One can see a clear influence on C.S. Lewis' argument about Jesus Christ as the "true myth." I've been challenged quite a bit recently on the veracity of ancient Israelite stories in the Bible as similar to other Mesopotamian myths. The conclusion is, of course, that the Biblical narratives are therefore untrue. Chesterton masterfully demonstrates the falsity of such a line of reasoning, with his customary wit and humor.

A permanent disadvantage of the study of folk-lore and kindred subjects is that the man of science can hardly be in the nature of things very frequently a man of the world. He is a student of nature; he is scarcely ever a student of human nature. And even where this difficulty is overcome, and he is in some sense a student of human nature, this is only a very faint beginning of the painful progress towards being human. For the study of primitive race and religion stands apart in one important respect from all, or nearly all, the ordinary scientific studies. A man can understand astronomy only by being an astronomer; he can understand entomology only by being an entomologist (or, perhaps, an insect); but he can understand a great deal of anthropology merely by being a man. He is himself the animal which he studies. Hence arises the fact which strikes the eye everywhere in the records of ethnology and folk-lore — the fact that the same frigid and detached spirit which leads to success in the study of astronomy or botany leads to disaster in the study of mythology or human origins. It is necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to a microbe; it is not necessary to cease to be a man in order to do justice to men. That same suppression of sympathies, that same waving away of intuitions or guess-work which make a man preternaturally clever in dealing with the stomach of a spider, will make him preternaturally stupid in dealing with the heart of man. He is making himself inhuman in order to understand humanity. An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world. For the secrets about which anthropologists concern themselves can be best learnt, not from books or voyages, but from the ordinary commerce of man with man. The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and taking down their answers in a note-book, although the cleverest man may pursue this course. The answer to the riddle is in England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers. The mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball. If a man desires to find out the origins of religions, let him not go to the Sandwich Islands; let him go to church. If a man wishes to know the origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go into society.

This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages. The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one — absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor. The learned man will say, for instance, “The natives of Mumbojumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world. This is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe.” To any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It is like saying, “The English in the twentieth century believed that a dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral.” It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind. I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceedingly natural and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human existence it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself. And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.

The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires are spiritual, because they are human. Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man’s wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful. The man’s desire for the pork-chop remains literally as mystical and ethereal as his desire for heaven. All attempts, therefore, at a science of any human things, at a science of history, a science of folk-lore, a science of sociology, are by their nature not merely hopeless, but crazy. You can no more be certain in economic history that a man’s desire for money was merely a desire for money than you can be certain in hagiology that a saint’s desire for God was merely a desire for God. And this kind of vagueness in the primary phenomena of the study is an absolutely final blow to anything in the nature of a science. Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.

As one of the enormous follies of folk-lore, let us take the case of the transmigration of stories, and the alleged unity of their source. Story after story the scientific mythologists have cut out of its place in history, and pinned side by side with similar stories in their museum of fables. The process is industrious, it is fascinating, and the whole of it rests on one of the plainest fallacies in the world. That a story has been told all over the place at some time or other, not only does not prove that it never really happened; it does not even faintly indicate or make slightly more probable that it never happened. That a large number of fishermen have falsely asserted that they have caught a pike two feet long, does not in the least affect the question of whether any one ever really did so. That numberless journalists announce a Franco-German war merely for money is no evidence one way or the other upon the dark question of whether such a war ever occurred. Doubtless in a few hundred years the innumerable Franco-German wars that did not happen will have cleared the scientific mind of any belief in the legendary war of ‘70 which did. But that will be because if folk-lore students remain at all, their nature win be unchanged; and their services to folk-lore will be still as they are at present, greater than they know. For in truth these men do something far more godlike than studying legends; they create them.

There are two kinds of stories which the scientists say cannot be true, because everybody tells them. The first class consists of the stories which are told everywhere, because they are somewhat odd or clever; there is nothing in the world to prevent their having happened to somebody as an adventure any more than there is anything to prevent their having occurred, as they certainly did occur, to somebody as an idea. But they are not likely to have happened to many people. The second class of their “myths” consist of the stories that are told everywhere for the simple reason that they happen everywhere. Of the first class, for instance, we might take such an example as the story of William Tell, now generally ranked among legends upon the sole ground that it is found in the tales of other peoples. Now, it is obvious that this was told everywhere because whether true or fictitious it is what is called “a good story;” it is odd, exciting, and it has a climax. But to suggest that some such eccentric incident can never have happened in the whole history of archery, or that it did not happen to any particular person of whom it is told, is stark impudence. The idea of shooting at a mark attached to some valuable or beloved person is an idea doubtless that might easily have occurred to any inventive poet. But it is also an idea that might easily occur to any boastful archer. It might be one of the fantastic caprices of some story-teller. It might equally well be one of the fantastic caprices of some tyrant. It might occur first in real life and afterwards occur in legends. Or it might just as well occur first in legends and afterwards occur in real life. If no apple has ever been shot off a boy’s head from the beginning of the world, it may be done tomorrow morning, and by somebody who has never heard of William Tell.

This type of tale, indeed, may be pretty fairly paralleled with the ordinary anecdote terminating in a repartee or an Irish bull. Such a retort as the famous “je ne vois pas la necessité” we have all seen attributed to Talleyrand, to Voltaire, to Henri Quatre, to an anonymous judge, and so on. But this variety does not in anyway make it more likely that the thing was never said at all. It is highly likely that it was really said by somebody unknown. It is highly likely that it was really said by Talleyrand. In any case, it is not any more difficult to believe that the mot might have occurred to a man in conversation than to a man writing memoirs. It might have occurred to any of the men I have mentioned. But there is this point of distinction about it, that it is not likely to have occurred to all of them. And this is where the first class of so-called myth differs from the second to which I have previously referred. For there is a second class of incident found to be common to the stories of five or six heroes, say to Sigurd, to Hercules, to Rustem, to the Cid, and so on. And the peculiarity of this myth is that not only is it highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to one hero, but it is highly reasonable to imagine that it really happened to all of them. Such a story, for instance, is that of a great man having his strength swayed or thwarted by the mysterious weakness of a woman. The anecdotal story, the story of William Tell, is as I have said, popular, because it is peculiar. But this kind of story, the story of Samson and Delilah of Arthur and Guinevere, is obviously popular because it is not peculiar. It is popular as good, quiet fiction is popular, because it tells the truth about people. If the ruin of Samson by a woman, and the ruin of Hercules by a woman, have a common legendary origin, it is gratifying to know that we can also explain, as a fable, the ruin of Nelson by a woman and the ruin of Parnell by a woman. And, indeed, I have no doubt whatever that, some centuries hence, the students of folk-lore will refuse altogether to believe that Elizabeth Barrett eloped with Robert Browning, and will prove their point up to the hilt by the, unquestionable fact that the whole fiction of the period was full of such elopements from end to end.

Possibly the most pathetic of all the delusions of the modern students of primitive belief is the notion they have about the thing they call anthropomorphism. They believe that primitive men attributed phenomena to a god in human form in order to explain them, because his mind in its sullen limitation could not reach any further than his own clownish existence. The thunder was called the voice of a man, the lightning the eyes of a man, because by this explanation they were made more reasonable and comfortable. The final cure for all this kind of philosophy is to walk down a lane at night. Any one who does so will discover very quickly that men pictured something semi-human at the back of all things, not because such a thought was natural, but because it was supernatural; not because it made things more comprehensible, but because it made them a hundred times more incomprehensible and mysterious. For a man walking down a lane at night can see the conspicuous fact that as long as nature keeps to her own course, she has no power with us at all. As long as a tree is a tree, it is a top-heavy monster with a hundred arms, a thousand tongues, and only one leg. But so long as a tree is a tree, it does not frighten us at all. It begins to be something alien, to be something strange, only when it looks like ourselves. When a tree really looks like a man our knees knock under us. And when the whole universe looks like a man we fall on our faces.

How Could We Not Sin in Heaven?

I've often wondered how God will bring it about that we will not sin in heaven. If God can bring it about that we not sin and yet retain our free will, then why did He not make it that way from the beginning? I think I've hit upon a partial solution, or perhaps a complete one. But first it is important to note that there is a distinction to make. In heaven, it will not simply be the case that we will not sin, but that we will be unable to sin. Does this crucial point mean that our choices will be somehow restricted, or even taken away altogether? How can we be free and obey God without the possibility of disobedience?

I would like to begin by making an analogy that will perhaps explain a bit of the situation. Each person, though all totally corrupted by sin (Romans 3), has differing desires for sin. I, for example, have no desire to indulge in drunkenness, though for others it is a serious temptation, and all have their own weaknesses. It could be the case that just as I have no desire to become drunk on my own, and that if anyone offered me the opportunity, I would reject it, in heaven this would be the case for all sins. Our inclinations would be such that if offered the chance to sin, we would freely reject it. But we can go even further. Only the righteous/saved will dwell with God in heaven (Revelation 21). Just as I will not only not choose drunkenness if it is offered to me, but will also not offer the choice to another (because of my own inclinations), no one in heaven will offer temptation to anyone else, because no one will be inclined at all toward any sin. So not only would we freely choose every time not to sin on our own, but the choice or temptation will never even be offered because no one will have sinful inclinations.

Does this capture the inability to sin, or is it simply a very strong form of the ability not to sin, which Christians (and only Christians) possess right now? I think that while the above may be helpful in imagining our state of mind in heaven, it does not quite capture our total inability to sin before God. Lenny Esposito points out (http://www.comereason.org/phil_qstn/phi039.asp) that God is unable to sin, though no one doubts He is totally free. Therefore it is indeed possible to be free and have an inability to sin. It could be that just as I (as a Christian not bound by my sin nature) am totally free (in the Sartrian sense of never being totally unfree), I do not have the ability to fly unaided. This does not essentially restrict my freedom (since we are not claiming a sort of radical freedom).

Granted, though, flying and making moral choices are not quite the same. For a complete understanding we must look to the Bible. 1 John 3:5-6, 9 state :

You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him sins; no one who sins has seen Him or knows Him. … No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

It is our partaking in the nature of God that provides us with the inability to sin, because God cannot go against His own nature, namely, absolute holiness. Esposito writes:

Because we have two natures that are at odds with each other, there is an inner struggle that exists in every believer. Romans 7 is dedicated to showing this struggle. However, upon death, the old man will pass away leaving only the new, divine nature. One of the most important passages to understanding this is found in Romans 6:4-7:

Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.

The last verse is key - "he who has died is free from sin." When we're saved and choose to be baptized, we die to ourselves and receive a new nature. This nature is in conflict with our old fleshly nature. When our bodies die, that old nature perishes completely as well, leaving the divine nature alone.

Now we return to one of the big questions I raised at the beginning: If God can bring it about that we not sin and yet retain our free will, then why did He not make it that way from the beginning? There is no easy answer to this question, and in the end we must trust God's wisdom. But Christian philosopher William Lane Craig writes that perhaps the only way heaven could exist would be as a result of our life on earth (http://www.origins.org/offices/billcraig/docs/craig-bradley0.html). He says:

Heaven may not be a possible world when you take it in isolation by itself. It may be that the only way in which God could actualize a heaven of free creatures all worshiping Him and not falling into sin would be by having, so to speak, this run-up to it, this advance life during which there is a veil of decision-making in which some people choose for God and some people against God. Otherwise you don't know that heaven is an actualizable world. You have no way of knowing that possibility.

There is also the very old concept of the felix culpa, or the happy fault. This idea, briefly stated, is that God allowed the Fall in order to bring about a greater good through the Incarnation of Christ and the salvation of our souls. As Aquinas writes in his Summa Theologica,

But there is no reason why human nature should not have been raised to something greater after sin. For God allows evils to happen in order to bring a greater good therefrom; hence it is written (Romans 5:20): "Where sin abounded, grace did more abound." Hence, too, in the blessing of the Paschal candle, we say: "O happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer!" (http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4001.htm#3)

We see in the world that God allows some evil to occur in order to bring about a greater good, and so it can be inferred that if our relating to Christ in the way that we do now is the greatest and ultimate good, God might permit the entry of sin into the world in order to accomplish it.

This article in the New York Times points out that pantheism is the reigning religion of Hollywood, and makes good points toward the end about its tenability.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/opinion/21douthat1.html?_r=2

Beauty as a Property: Exploring God’s Role in the Beautiful

I have attempted all semester to lay out a convincing case for the objectivity of the beautiful. It has encouraged me to discover that I am not alone in my opinions, and that great philosophers and aestheticians like Hegel and Schelling also believe in beauty as an objective property of the object. And while I believe that a somewhat cogent argument can be made from a purely philosophical position for the objectivity of beauty, an entirely new and useful set of tools and evidences is opened up when we look at beauty through its place in philosophy of religion, or theology generally. I will therefore attempt to explore the existence of beauty through an assumption that God exists. If this assumption is true, what is the significance for the beautiful? Does God’s existence necessitate beauty’s role as objective or subjective, as property or reaction? Philosophical arguments in the mode of Hegel are generally undertaken from a position which, if not atheistic, is at least not based within a theistic worldview. It is my hope that through an evaluation of the characteristics of God I can demonstrate the objectivity of the beautiful and show that in a theistic universe beauty must be seen as a property.

Before we can attempt to answer questions about the role of the beautiful, we must first discuss what we mean when we speak of God. Generally, within the realm of philosophy of religion and in practical, street-level discussion, God is envisioned as “omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent,” shortened to “3-O.” This of course means that God is absolutely powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. This fits in well with the conception of God in any of the major monotheistic religions. I would expand on this definition and state that God is, as Kierkegaard defines Him, the absolute. He is the eternal source of all things and the Creator of the universe. He is at the same time personal and not a vague force or principle. This still falls within the generic monotheistic framework, but excludes deist gods and the anthropological gods of many modern theologians and philosophers. We will take this God as our starting point.

If God is the absolute, and the source of all that is good, as well as the creator of the universe, then it stands to reason that any and all good things find not only their source in Him, but their maximization. As Anselm of Canterbury states, God is “that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought.” As a Person, God possesses certain attributes of character and qualities of being. Falling under the heading of absolute goodness, we find that God possesses qualities such as justice, mercy, love, peace, happiness, majesty, wisdom, and (most important for us) beauty, all of which are found in their maximal state. Since God exists forever, and has always been God, we can therefore see that He has always possessed these properties, and that they were never technically created, but existed from eternity in the attributes of God. Beauty, as an attribute of God, has therefore existed forever, independent of humanity’s experience of it. We will revisit this later.

If God is the possessor and absolute exemplar of all good-making properties, then God must be absolutely beautiful. This implies two things: that whoever looks upon God must recognize and feel Him to be beautiful, and that beauty is made up of degrees. Taking the first point first, we must now ask the question, “If there is an object (even if it be the only object) which all agree to be beautiful, then does this prove that the object has what we would call objective beauty?” And in response to the second point, we can ask, “If beauty admits of degrees, possessing an absolute maximum and an absolute minimum (nothing at all), is this the sort of thing we would expect to find were beauty a subjective reaction?”

If every single person experiencing a particular thing considers it to be beautiful, we could reasonably conclude that there must be something that all of these experiences have in common. If beauty were merely subjective, it would be almost statistically impossible for every single person to have ever lived to have the exact same sort of reaction (I do not say the exact same reaction, for reasons I will discuss below). There will always be those like Hegel who see the majesty of the Swiss Alps and are unfazed. But my intuition is that upon seeing God, one would be justified in stating, “He is objectively beautiful.” I would argue that the thing held in common, the thing that unites all beings in the recognition of the object as beautiful, is in fact the recognition of the property of beauty within the object.

Addressing now the second question, I would assert that a thing with a maximum and minimum, and gradations in magnitude between the two, is more readily described as a property than as a reaction. Reactions are subjective, and are quite similar to feelings, in that one cannot assign truth or falsity to its possession. One does not say, “I am incorrect in having such and such a reaction,” as one would say, “I am incorrect in identifying such and such a property.” Reactions (fright, nervousness, disgust) do not have points at which they could not be more than they are. However, properties (brightness, hardness, generosity) have definite maximums. This leads me to believe that beauty is a property and not a reaction.

It is therefore understood in what way beauty must be objective. But how are we to account for the widely varying tastes and aesthetic judgments which we see in the world? We can again look to God in order to provide an answer. God, as has already been established, is infinite and absolute. It is impossible for any single human being, with their limited capacity for reflection and understanding, to comprehend the totality of God’s existence. We can only begin to grasp the tiny portion of His character which He has demonstrated in our own lives, and (for any of the major monotheistic religions) trust in the communication of His attributes through direct revelation.

We can understand that God has many characteristics, each one of which is maximally present. We can have propositional knowledge of this, but experiential knowledge is problematic at best. God’s beauty can therefore be thought of as a great multi-faceted jewel, each side of which reflects light in a different and unique way. Humans are positioned all around this jewel so that there is a facet most easily visible to each person, and through which the light interacts and reflects to give an experience of the jewel. The experiences of each person looking at the jewel will be different, because each one sees a different facet of the great and cohesive whole.
In the same way, viewing some facets from a certain position may not be optimal, so that while the person positioned for one facet cannot fully enjoy or even appreciate another facet, viewed from the right perspective it becomes properly beautiful. Beauty remains objective, but the experience of it can differ wildly depending on the aspect of ultimate and perfect beauty which one is oriented toward. The aesthetic experience is then an intensely subjective reaction, manifested in a feeling, but triggered by an objective property. The experience of the beautiful is indeed subjective, but that subjectivity is a response to something that is really there.
Much of the arguments towards beauty as subjective lie in the equation of the experience of the beautiful with the beautiful itself. Many of our reactions to things such as properties which objectively exist can vary widely. For example, I dislike the taste of cheese, but I know many people love it. The taste is objective, even to the point of being scientifically reproducible, but my reaction to it is completely different than my brother’s. However, by equating the taste of the cheese with my reaction to that taste, I would be making a mistake. The taste remains the same and exists independently of my reaction to it. The same is true of beauty. Subjective reactions are engendered by objective impressions.

Some may object that beauty cannot be defined or rearticulated as other objective properties can. I would argue, though, that there are numerous objective properties which cannot be independently articulated or defined, but the insufficiency of language to account for an object does not in any way affect whether that object continues to exist outside of our perception of it. One would be hard-pressed to define being, for instance, at least not without devolving into a Heideggerian jumble of deliberate syntactical gymnastics. This does not make being subjective. There are simply some things which one is directly aware of, and are so obvious and pervasive that attempting to attach words to them becomes a challenge.

A final argument against the subjectivity of beauty is one I have made before, but believe to have some merit, if solely as a method of testing our intuitions about what we call beautiful. As stated above, if beauty is an attribute of God it has always existed. If beauty is a subjective reaction within the mind of a human being, then without human beings there would be no such thing as beauty. And since we have already established that beauty has always existed, and so existed before humans, beauty cannot simply be humanly subjective. God could, it may be argued, experience His own beauty, but I am hesitant to assign such a close parallel between human subjectivity and the Absolute of all that exists. In any case, beauty as reaction occurs not in the world but inside a mind. Without a mind, there is no reaction, and therefore no so-called beauty. If a flower blooms in the forest and no one sees it, is it beautiful? The answer would have to be no. It would of course have the potential to trigger a reaction within a mind, but until a mind experiences it the flower remains passive, aesthetically neutral.

My intuition revolts against this concept. The flower should be beautiful whether anyone sees it or not. And that is just the sort of occurrence that would arise if beauty were a property of things and not simply a mental reaction. The flower, or the mountains of a distant planet, or the face of God, all of these things are beautiful independent of human experience of them. This rings true to me, and I find it fits well within the preexisting theory of the objectivity of beauty.
In conclusion, there are points which, taken together, make what I believe to be a reasonable case for the objectivity of beauty: (1) Beauty is an attribute of God and is therefore an implied property; (2) beauty has existed eternally in God and therefore cannot simply be a human reaction; (3) there is something which everyone would admit to be beautiful once seen, namely, God (implying objectivity); (4) beauty admits of an absolute maximum and minimum, in the way reactions do not; (5) beauty and the experience of beauty are not identical, but the experience of beauty is the subjective reaction to an objective property; and (6) the inability to clearly articulate beauty does not rule out its objectivity. If one then see beauty as an attribute of God, one can argue for the objectivity of beauty in ways which pure philosophical discourse is unable to utilize.