This is from Chesterton's book Orthodoxy. I almost want to make this quote a major pillar in my own philosophy.
"We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget."
All our faculties have the right role here. Common sense is of practical value; it can help us get on in the world, it can help us survive, make money, and have all the goods that come from material comfort. Rationality can help us with logic, thinking clearly about things we were meant to think clearly about. But we can't help but think that a pure life of rational contemplation sucks the sap out of the tree. We feel that there is something more primitive, primal, further back, on the other side of the world (almost), which we must feed upon so as to perserve spiritual sanity. This is hard because our minds are constantly daming this current. Everything has to pass the test of intellectual scrutiny. But there is something about who we are that isn't satisfied by pure rationality.
It does sort of feed into the idea that we forget that we've forgotten. The whole point of our existence is to remember who we are. Throughout our lives, we're supposed to find out more and more who we are by finding out more and more who God is. We have the wool drawn over our eyes when we have this pathological desire to engage in all these activities that are designed - by their nature - to not assist us in our quest to find ourselves.
But "spirit and art and ecstacy"! "For one aweful instant we remember that we forgot." Doesn't this just resonate with you? I have to remember that I cannot enter into the least bit of imaginative sympathy with the person who cannot feel this in his bones, or the person who has no desire for anything having to do with spirit, art, or ecstacy. I know these gods take on different forms, and I'm only directly acquainted with the way they manifest themselves in my own consciousness.
This all, again, supports my point that something is prior to rationality, something is there prior to the Logos, something or Someone begets this Logos, and it is a sublime mystery to me to pond
er the mode of existence the Logos spawns from. My imagination can only cling to images of tempests, ocean waves, galaxies, canyons, mountains, or feelings of awe, fascination, and dread, or things associated with the other-worldly, the ghostly, the alien, even the uncivilized, the barbarous, the primitive, the amoral, or pre-moral, a maelstrom, of which the tortured genius is a fleeting shadow, intense, undomesticated, unpredictable, like a lion.
"We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget."
All our faculties have the right role here. Common sense is of practical value; it can help us get on in the world, it can help us survive, make money, and have all the goods that come from material comfort. Rationality can help us with logic, thinking clearly about things we were meant to think clearly about. But we can't help but think that a pure life of rational contemplation sucks the sap out of the tree. We feel that there is something more primitive, primal, further back, on the other side of the world (almost), which we must feed upon so as to perserve spiritual sanity. This is hard because our minds are constantly daming this current. Everything has to pass the test of intellectual scrutiny. But there is something about who we are that isn't satisfied by pure rationality.
It does sort of feed into the idea that we forget that we've forgotten. The whole point of our existence is to remember who we are. Throughout our lives, we're supposed to find out more and more who we are by finding out more and more who God is. We have the wool drawn over our eyes when we have this pathological desire to engage in all these activities that are designed - by their nature - to not assist us in our quest to find ourselves.
But "spirit and art and ecstacy"! "For one aweful instant we remember that we forgot." Doesn't this just resonate with you? I have to remember that I cannot enter into the least bit of imaginative sympathy with the person who cannot feel this in his bones, or the person who has no desire for anything having to do with spirit, art, or ecstacy. I know these gods take on different forms, and I'm only directly acquainted with the way they manifest themselves in my own consciousness.
This all, again, supports my point that something is prior to rationality, something is there prior to the Logos, something or Someone begets this Logos, and it is a sublime mystery to me to pond
er the mode of existence the Logos spawns from. My imagination can only cling to images of tempests, ocean waves, galaxies, canyons, mountains, or feelings of awe, fascination, and dread, or things associated with the other-worldly, the ghostly, the alien, even the uncivilized, the barbarous, the primitive, the amoral, or pre-moral, a maelstrom, of which the tortured genius is a fleeting shadow, intense, undomesticated, unpredictable, like a lion.
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