Schall on Chesterton: Timely Essays on Timeless Paradoxes

Epilogue: On the Enemies of the Man Who Had No Enemies

Epilogue: On the Enemies of the Man Who Had No Enemies i Chesterton (1874–1936), the great English essayist, journalist, and philosopher, was a man of singular good will, engaging charm, and broad interests. From all eyewitness reports about him, he never really had any enemies. He does not seem to have loved those who hated him, for the singular reason that no one hated him. Even those who most disagreed with him on a given issue still had great affection for him and enjoyed his company.To be bested by Chesterton in an argument was a sort of badge of honor —that someone of Chesterton’s stature would take another’s arguments seriously even if he proved them wrong. Chesterton was evidently difficult not to like. He was a man of great girth and of enormous wisdom, the two qualities that somehow seemed, in his case, naturally to go together, as the similar combination did in the lives of St. Thomas and of Samuel Johnson, both of whom Chesterton greatly admired. These three—St. Thomas, Johnson, and Chesterton—along with Aristotle were probably the “sanest” (a favorite word of Chesterton) men who ever lived. Chesterton personified, in a remarkable degree, that very Christian and very delicate notion of hating the sin but loving the sinner. He did indeed hate sin; he sharply attacked error.We seem nowadays, by contrast, to be living in an age wherein loving the sinner, as a condition, explicitly involves approving the sin. We cannot, apparently, figure out how our actions and our ideas do not belong together.We end up defining wrong subjectively. We have an inalienable right to do whatever we will. Even less can we figure out how it is that what we will to put into effect 226 may not be what ought to be put into effect. Our rights have come to be tied up with what we will, no matter it is what we will. Rights are will-rights, not reason-rights.We end up insisting that we be praised for what we ought not to do simply because we will to do it.Those who refuse to praise our deviant ways we charge with intolerance, with lack of compassion. We establish sin and moral disorder as just another “will-right” of the public order.We call it anything from multiculturalism, to progressivism, to liberalism, to tolerance, to compassion. In a sense, what Chesterton has to teach us is precisely how to deal with with those whose ideas or actions are wrong in some objective sense.We do not, if we think about it, want to end up by approving what is wrong or evil in errant actions. Neither do we want to deny either the intrinsic dignity of the person in error or the fact that free people can do evil things that ought not to be done. It was characteristic of Chesterton, who loved controversy and debate, clearly to grasp the logic of ideas or passions that would, if uncorrected, lead a person or a society of persons into error or sin. In an almost uncanny way, he saw where ideas, if not attended to, would lead.As I read him today, I almost think Chesterton foresaw in thought and argument all the errors of the twentieth century before they happened in reality. But he always paid his opponent the compliment of taking his ideas seriously, even when he took them humorously. Sometimes, perhaps, the only way we can take an idea seriously is if we take it with some amusement. Chesterton had no doubt that the origin of all disorder was found in will, but he also knew that will referred back to and depended on intellect, on ideas, so that the work of thinking was in some sense prerequisite for right doing. ii But if Chesterton had no “enemies,” how can I boldly talk of the “enemies” of the man who had no “enemies?” In an IllustratThe Enemies of the ManWho Had No Enemies 227 ed London News column from December 3, 1921, he wrote,“People are professing nowadays that it is perfectly easy to love their enemies, so long as they are not asked to be just even to their friends.”2 Not only does loving one’s enemy include being just to him, Chesterton implies, but it likewise includes being just to one’s friends.We are not, after...