The Essential Chesterton Essay
If one had to recommend to a muggle, that is, to someone who lives outside the secret wizardly universe of GK Chesterton, which is the first and best and most essential essay of Chesterton’s to read, I would select the following, which appeared in the book HERETICS.
The reader will perhaps be disoriented to realize that this work was written over one hundred years ago, but answers certain nonsense agitating and perhaps condemning the current generation this year, this month, this hour. The mark of a great writer is that his wit and wisdom are timeless and ever green.
On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family
by G.K. Chesterton
The family may fairly be considered, one would think, an ultimate human institution. Every one would admit that it has been the main cell and central unit of almost all societies hitherto, except, indeed, such societies as that of Lacedaemon, which went in for “efficiency,” and has, therefore, perished, and left not a trace behind.
Christianity, even enormous as was its revolution, did not alter this ancient and savage sanctity; it merely reversed it. It did not deny the trinity of father, mother, and child. It merely read it backwards, making it run child, mother, father. This it called, not the family, but the Holy Family, for many things are made holy by being turned upside down. But some sages of our own decadence have made a serious attack on the family. They have impugned it, as I think wrongly; and its defenders have defended it, and defended it wrongly. The common defence of the family is that, amid the stress and fickleness of life, it is peaceful, pleasant, and at one. But there is another defence of the family which is possible, and to me evident; this defence is that the family is not peaceful and not pleasant and not at one.
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Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.