Welcome back to another episode of “Paging the Everlasting Man,” wherein I read chapters of G. K. Chesterton books and then add my commentary. We’re starting with his 1905 book Heretics. This is the second chapter, On the Negative Spirit. («Here» is the first chapter, Introductory Remarks on the Importance of Orthodoxy, in case you missed it.)
The first part of the episode, containing my reading of the chapter (the best part), is available to everyone for free, but the second part with my commentary is exclusively for paid subscribers. (This is the first audio content I’ve placed behind a paywall.) If you’d like to upgrade your subscription, there are discounts available on both annual and monthly subscriptions.
Below is the text of the chapter.
Chapter Two: On the negative spirit
Much has been said, and said truly, of the monkish morbidity, of the hysteria which as often gone with the visions of hermits or nuns. But let us never forget that this visionary religion is, in one sense, necessarily more wholesome than our modern and reasonable morality. It is more wholesome for this reason, that it can contemplate the idea of success or triumph in the hopeless fight towards the ethical ideal, in what Stevenson called, with his usual startling felicity, “the lost fight of virtue.” A modern morality, on the other hand, can only point with absolute conviction to the horrors that follow breaches of law; its only certainty is a certainty of ill. It can only point to imperfection. It has no perfection to point to. But the monk meditating upon Christ or Buddha has in his mind an image of perfect health, a thing of clear colours and clean air. He may contemplate this ideal wholeness and happiness far more than he ought; he may contemplate it to the neglect of exclusion of essential THINGS; he may contemplate it until he has become a dreamer or a driveller; but still it is wholeness and happiness that he is contemplating. He may even go mad; but he is going mad for the love of sanity. But the modern student of ethics, even if he remains sane, remains sane from an insane dread of insanity.
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