Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.

-- R. Burns Epistle to a Young Friend

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Things Goin' On



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.  G.K. Chesterton from Heretics, Chapter 11, “Science and the Savages”


We are very busy today, and tomorrow will be worse.  I hope you enjoy the Chesterton excerpt above.  There are no bad passage in Heretics, but that last sentence is sublimely Chestertonian. 

5 comments:

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"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."

Post-toasty modernmaniacs sure do hate mystery, don't they?
Especially The Mystery.

What's both sad n' funny is they believe they gno what it is of their own accord steeped in pride, and my oh my ain't they proud of themselves for being so modern.

Prayin' for you and the Missus, Mushroom. Hang in there!

mushroom said...

I appreciate it.

One of the reasons I've been so busy the last couple of days is that I have to take her out of town tomorrow to see a specialist in neuro-muscular disorders. It's set up as a quick visit. Don't know if he'll want us to remain in town for testing or labs Friday.

They tapered her off the steroid and she is starting to show little signs of whatever it is coming back.

julie said...

I hope your trip goes well today, Mushroom. You are both still in my prayers, too.

John Lien said...

Yeah, what julie and Ben said.

mushroom said...

Not much to report. The new guy is, I think, a Spaniard, and clearly extremely intelligent and knowledgeable. (It's a little like talking to Puss in Boots from "Shrek".) We're scheduled to go back in three weeks after he has had time to go through the two-inch thick stack of notes plus the actual lab results which he has requested.

He started talking about "seizures" which is kind of like talking about "inflammation" or "encephalopathy". It sounds like a diagnosis, but it's really just a symptom. So more blood was drawn and sent to Mayo.