Transcriber’s Notes: Underscores are used to enclose text in italics; the three words that end this sentence _are in italics_. The spelling and punctuation of the book have not been changed. There are 65 endnotes. Each endnote is labelled by a copy of its marker which consists of a number in square brackets. HILAIRE BELLOC: No Alienated Man HILAIRE BELLOC: No Alienated Man _A Study in Christian Integration_ By Frederick Wilhelmsen Sheed and Ward · New York · 1953 Copyright 1953 by Sheed & Ward, Inc. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-9801 Manufactured in the United States of America TO JACK MADDUX PREFACE Poet, sailor, Grizzlebeard—this trinity sums up, not only the man who is Hilaire Belloc, but the vision of integrated humanity concretized in his work. Bellocian humanism is Hilaire Belloc grasped in the essence of his spirit, seen at the center of his being. Only a detailed biography will reveal to this generation the full flavour, the magnificence, of this latter-day Villon. Nonetheless it seemed to me that the perfections symbolized by the Poet, the Sailor, the Grizzlebeard are not the peculiarities of one man whose life has spanned almost two ages. They are perfections essential to the integral completion of Christian humanity. With this thesis in mind, I wrote this book: an attempt not only to introduce the contemporary reader to Belloc, but also an attempt to disengage, from the vast corpus of Bellociana, those themes that are of permanent value. What follows is not a biography, nor is it a book of literary criticism. It is, if you like, a “metaphysics of the concrete” seen through the eyes of a man rooted in the things that are. CONTENTS _Page_ _ONE_ No Alienated Man 1 _TWO_ Grizzlebeard: History From Within 49 _THREE_ Christendom: “_Esto Perpetua_” 84 _CONCLUSION_ The Future Place of Hilaire Belloc in English Letters 101 _NOTES_ 105 List of Editions Cited 106 Chapter One NO ALIENATED MAN _The Four Men: Natural Humanism_ The ancient Arabs spoke of a creature having life in two worlds: his body was rooted in the earth, but his soul swept out across the horizons to a world beyond. Let us call him by his name: Man. This balance which is Man is a tension rarely maintained in the course of human existence.