Oct, 15.
GK, Chesterton, is one of the best known literary men England. He is, we believe, a bluff, hearty, good-natured man who likes good ale and, being somewhat of a crank himself, he abhors cranks with a yedly hatred. In 1922 he became a convert to Roman Catholicism and since then he can no more keep theology out of his writing than Uncle Dick could keep King Charles' head out of his effusions, In the latest causerie we have ween in the "Illustrated London News" "G.K. reasons in Miltonie style of "fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute." and'all the high and abstruse themes usually left severely alone by editors. Yet, such is the magic of G.K.'s pen, that his arguments are as interesting as 44 detective story. The question at issue "is whether man is a free agent and cun "do just.as he jolly well likes" or whether he is really the, slave, of fixed and lives all his life long tinder the Blessing dcluson that he is free. Science, we are told, has come tothe conclusion "that. man {8 bound in chains of inevit table causation, forbidding him any kind of free will. "This tickles Mr. Chesterton's' fane for it seems to indicate that science is coming round to the oft ridiculed Scripture doctrine of foreordination, which was supposed to be thrown into Timbo by the criticism of advanced theologians.
To the ordinary person the question appears to savour of nonsense. He sayx, "I ktiow 1 am free because I always do just what I want to do." This is conclusive only as far as. it goes but it does not go very far, for the scientist immediate ly replies, "But why do.you want to things and And this carries us at once into the really of psychology. And we find ourselves entangled in a maze of terminology through which it as difficult to thread our way as it was in the former: theological disputes about "free will and foreknowledge absolute "There is that ominous word' heredity, "Every child born into the world inherits a certain bins which determines, very largely, its outlook on life a its reaction to the circumstances of its environment. ible chain is 0 strong that we never escape its shackles and cannot even assert our freedom without hearing its links clank or whet! it is but a gossamer. thread easily napped, "Ay, there's" the rub. Every man is, certainly, free to do what he likes but he not free to like what he like That has been predetermined for him by a chain of ancestores: going back to the, stone age. And the incubus of his heritage. is his old man of the sea that he must carry all his life long.
The consequences that flow from this doctrine are sufficient-alarming, If none of our! actions are free but are all foreordained by infallible de: tiny, what" becomes' of that: brimstone pit which was the terror of our childish dreams This is what the teaching "of science seems to come. to, "If [there he no freedom, and mail fs, but an automaton, there can be no transgression, no fall and no judgment. But this is travelling too fast. Our inheritance from the past ix not all dust and ashes. There is also that faculty in man that takes cognizance of his" own' actions and. passes judgment upon them whether they be good or bad. And even Omar, agnostic as he is, cries something outside of himself "O thou". And when the human heart sends a ery into ithe void, who shall deny that from the void there may come Jan answer back? There are within us not only the vestiges of the tiger and the ape but also reason and conscience and the knowledge of good as well as lof evil, "Choose ye," cried the jold prophet, "whom ye will serve." And' "choose ye" cries ithe inner voice and by tha lchofce we shall be judged; nay, judge ourselves. It la-true that we cannot choose our likes, but we can choose our-action We can decide to do the thing we do not like and steadfastly pursue it until one day, the doing shall he second nature." It was this, war in Mansoul. {iat drove Prince Siddartha from, his palace and his bride and set, him sitting forty days and forty nights. under the Bo tree until found "the way". And the ay Was not a primrose: path that sloped downwards but a thorn-strewed road that: led to ithe heights. Tt was this that' made Bunyan's pilgrim flee from the, City of Destruction and seek, even through the Hough of despond, the pathway of peat And we may be sure whatever Progress may be made in scientific discovery we shall never get past the elemental facts of ood and evil, right and -wrong. These Saxon words are among, the first we learn to'lisp and the fundaniental difference between them is too deep: to be effaced by casuistry, however cunning.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.