Another savage trait of our time is the disposition to talk about material substances instead of about ideas. The old civilisation talked about the sin of gluttony or excess. We talk about the Problem of Drink--as if drink could be a problem. When people have come to call the problem of human intemperance the Problem of Drink, and to talk about curing it by attacking the drink traffic, they have reached quite a dim stage of barbarism. The thing is an inverted form of fetish worship; it is no sillier to say that a bottle is a god than to say that a bottle is a devil. The people who talk about the curse of drink will probably progress down that dark hill. In a little while we shall have them calling the practice of wife-beating the Problem of Pokers; the habit of housebreaking will be called the Problem of the Skeleton-Key Trade; and for all I know they may try to prevent forgery by shutting up all the stationers' shops by Act of Parliament.
G.K. ChestertonTags: sin blame brilliance g-k-chesterton modern-barbarism
For the critics who think Chesterton frivolous or 'paradoxical' I have to work hard to feel even pity; sympathy is out of the question.
C.S. LewisTags: opinions c-s-lewis g-k-chesterton
Now when a man is as right as that in his forecasts, there is some reason to think he may be right in his premises.
Frank SheedTags: predictions g-k-chesterton
Chesterton had an incorrigible and persistent tendency to throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater.
R. Alan WoodsTags: generalizations g-k-chesterton r-alan-woods
International peace means a peace between nations, not a peace after the destruction of nations, like the Buddhist peace after the destruction of personality. The golden age of the good European is like the heaven of the Christian: it is a place where people will love each other; not like the heaven of the Hindu, a place where they will be each other.
G.K. ChestertonTags: g-k-chesterton all-things-considered
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