G. K. Chesterton


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The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton (part of a collection)
Chesterton Day by Day: The Wit and Wisdom of G. K. Chesterton by G. K. Chesterton
Eugenics and Other Evils by G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton's Early Poetry by G. K. Chesterton
Greybeards at Play by G. K. Chesterton (part of a collection)
The Wild Knight and Other Poems by G. K. Chesterton (part of a collection)

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Chesterton Day by Day: The Wit and Wisdom of G. K. Chesterton
by G. K. Chesterton

For any author, much less a 'rolicking' journalist often caught up in the passing controversies of his day, the writings of G. K. Chesterton have shown remarkable staying power. During his life, this talented British writer was the private friend and public foe of writers such as George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells. Two-thirds of a century after his death, the ideas of Shaw and Wells seem curiously quaint and dated, while Chesterton's writings remain fresh as the day they were written. That's why many of Wells later and more political writings are out of print while more and more of what Chesterton wrote is finding its way back onto the shelves of bookstores.

The reason simple. Chesterton is one of the most quotable writers of the twentieth-century. He has an incredible knack for capturing in a few concise and memorable words what other authors labor and groan to say over many pages. Lengthy books have been written to explain the essence of Fascism and its close kin Nazism. Few have come as close as Chesterton did when he remarked that, "The intellectual criticism of Fascism is really this: that it appeals to an appetite for authority, without very clearly giving the authority for the appetite." That is Hitler's Fuhrer Principle in a nutshell, and it also why so many followed the German dictator into madness.

For this book, Chesterton selected a reading from his writings between 1900 and 1911 for each day of the year and for each of the "moveable" Christian feasts. Here are some examples.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried. -January 13


Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth: this has been exactly reversed. . . The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping: not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on. For the old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which will make him stop working altogether. -April 2


It is not by any means self-evident upon the face of it that an institution like the liberty of speech is right or just. It is not natural or obvious to let a man utter follies and abominations which you believe to be bad for mankind any more than it is natural or obvious to let a man dig up a part of the public road, or infect half a town with typhoid fever. The theory of free speech, that truth is so much larger and stranger and more many-sided than we know of, that it is very much better at all costs to hear every one's account of it, is a theory which has been justified upon the whole by experiment, but which remains a very daring and even a very surprising theory. It is really one of the great discoveries of the modern time; but once admitted, it is a principle that does not merely affect politics, but philosophy, ethics, and finally, poetry. -May 9


It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back to orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind my first wild doubts of doubt. Our grandmothers were quite right when they said that Tom Paine and the Freethinkers unsettled the mind. They do. They unsettled mine horribly. The rationalists made me question whether reason was of any use whatever; and when I had finished Herbert Spencer I had got as far as doubting (for the first time) whether evolution had occurred at all. As I laid down the last of Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures, the dreadful thought broke into my mind, 'Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.' -December 21


ISBN: 1-58742-014-7 (paperback) and 1-58742-015-5 (hardback)
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aseugenics

Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized Society
by G. K. Chesterton

In the second decade of the twentieth century, an idea became all too fashionable among those who feel that it is their right to set social trends. Wealthy families took it on as a pet cause, generously bankrolling its research. The New York Times praised it as a wonderful "new science." Scientists, such as the brilliant plant biologist, Luther Burbank, praised it unashamedly. Educators as prominent as Charles Elliot, President of Harvard University, promoted it as a solution to social ills. America's public schools did their part. In the 1920s, almost three-fourths of high school social science textbooks taught its principles. Not to be outdone, judges and physicians called for those principles to be enshrined into law. Congress agree, passing the 1924 immigration law to exclude from American shores the people of Eastern and Southern Europe that the idea branded as inferior. In 1927, the U. S. Supreme Court joined the chorus, ruling by a lopsided vote of 8 to 1 that the forced sterilization of men and women was constitutional.

That idea was eugenics and in the English-speaking world it had virtually no critics among the "chattering classes." When he wrote this book, Chesterton stood virtually alone against the intellectual world of his day. Yet to his great credit, he showed no sign of being intimidated by the prestige of his foes. On the contrary, he thunders against eugenics, ranking it one of the great evils of modern society. And, in perhaps one of the most chillingly accurate prophecies of the century, he warns that the ideas that eugenics had unleashed were likely to bear bitter fruit in another nation. That nation was Germany, the "very land of scientific culture from which the ideal of a Superman had come." In fact, the very group that Nazism tried to exterminate, Eastern European Jews, and the group it targeted for later extermination, the Slavs, were two of those whose biological unfitness eugenists sought so eagerly to confirm.

As the title suggests, eugenics is not the only evil that Chesterton blasts. Socialism gets some brilliantly worded broadsides and Chesterton, in complete fairness, does not spare capitalism. He also attacks the scientifically justified regimentation that others call the "health police." The same rationalizations that justified eugenics, he notes, can also be used to deprive a working man of his beer or any man of his pipe. Although it was first published in 1922, there's a startling relevance to what Chesterton had to say about mettlesome bureaucrats who deprive life of its little pleasures and freedoms. His tale about an unfortunate man fired because "his old cherry-briar" "might set the water-works on fire" is priceless.

That tale illustrates Chesterton's brilliant use of humor, a knack his foes were quick to realize. In their review of his book, Birth Control News griped, "His tendency is reactionary, and as he succeeds in making most people laugh, his influence in the wrong direction is considerable. Eugenics Review was even blunter. "The only interest in this book," they said, "is pathological. It is a revelation of the ineptitude to which ignorance and blind prejudice may reduce an intelligent man."

History has been far kinder to Chesterton than to his critics. It's now generally agree that eugenics was born of a paranoia fed by evolution and by the "ignorance and blind prejudice" of social elites. But never forget that Chesterton was the first to say so, condemning what many of his peers praised.
The completely new edition of Chesterton's classic includes almost fifty pages from the writings of Chesterton's opponents to illustrate just how accurate his attacks on eugenists were. For researchers, it also includes a detailed 13-page index.
The thing that really is trying to tyrannise through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statues, and spread not by pilgrims but by policeman--that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics.

ISBN: 1-58742-002-3 (paperback) and 1-58742-006-6 (hardback)
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Early-Web-90

G. K. Chesterton's Early Poetry: Greybeards at Play, The Wild Knight and Other Stories, The Ballad of the White Horse
by G. K. Chesterton

Here under one cover are G. K. Chesterton's first three books of poetry: Greybeards at Play (1901), The Wild Knight and Other Stories (1901) and The Ballad of the White Horse (1911).

Greybeards at Play deserves far more attention than it has thus far received. In his contribution to G. K. Chesterton: A Centenary Appraisal, the poet W. H. Auden praised it with these words: "I have no hesitation in saying that it contains some of the best pure nonsense verse in English. . . . Surely it is high time such enchanting pieces should be made readily available."

The playfulness of Greybeards at Play contrasts dramatically with the historical importance of The Ballad of the White Horse. During one of the darkest moments in World War II, the front page of The Times of London would quote these memorable words from it: "I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet and the sea rises higher." They expressed better than anything else the great trials England was passing through just five years after Chesterton's death.

In his great epic, Chesterton had done with English history what Tolkien would later do with his imaginary history of Middle-earth. He had molded events and placed them in a new light to give meaning and purpose to history. As Chesterton would note on the book's title page, he agreed with King Alfred that, "I say, as do all Christian men, that there is a divine purpose that rules and not fate."

ISBN: 1-58742-034-1 (paperback) and 1-58742-035-X (hardback)
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