The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
I find it easier to imagine an evil spirit agitating the legs
of a pig than a good spirit agitating the legs of a table.
But I will not here enter into the argument, since I am only
trying to describe the atmosphere. Whatever has happened in more
recent years, what Huxley expected has certainly not happened.
There has been a revolt against Christian morality, and where there
has not been a return of Christian mysticism, it has been a return of
the mysticism without the Christianity. Mysticism itself has returned,
with all its moons and twilights, its talismans and spells.
Mysticism itself has returned, and brought with it seven devils
worse than itself.
But the scientific coincidence is even more strict and close.
It affects not only the general question of miracles,
but the particular question of possession. This is the very
last element in the Christian story that would ever have been
selected by the enlightened Christian apologist. Gladstone would
defend it, but he would not go out of his way to dwell on it.
It is an excellent working model of what I mean by finding
an unexpected support, and finding it in an unexpected quarter.
It is not theological but psychological study that has brought us
back into this dark underworld of the soul, where even identity
seems to dissolve or divide, and men are not even themselves.
I do not say that psychologists admit the discovery of demoniacs;
and if they did they would doubtless call them something else,
such as demono-maniacs. But they admit things which seem almost
as near to a new supernaturalism, and things quite as incredible
to the old rationalism. Dual personality is not so very far
from diabolic possession. And if the dogma of subconsciousness
allows of agnosticism, the agnosticism cuts both ways.
A man cannot say there is a part of him of which he is quite unconscious,
and only conscious that it is not in contact with the unknown.
He cannot say there is a sealed chamber or cellar under his house,
of which he knows nothing whatever; but that he is quite certain that it
cannot have an underground passage leading anywhere else in the world.
He cannot say he knows nothing whatever about its size or shape
or appearance, except that it certainly does not contain a relic
of the finger-joint of St. Catherine of Alexandria, or that it
certainly is not haunted by the ghost of King Herod Agrippa.
If there is any sort of legend or tradition or plausible probability
which says that it is, he cannot call a thing impossible where he is
not only ignorant but even unconscious. It comes back therefore
to the same reality, that the old compact cosmos depended on a
compact consciousness. If we are dealing with unknown quantities,
we cannot deny their connection with other unknown quantities.
If I have a self of which I can say nothing, how can I even say
that it is my own self? How can I even say that I always had it,
or that it did not come from somewhere else? It is clear that we
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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