Tuesday, November 06, 2007

On Modernity

From G K Chesterton, of course:

WHAT we are looking at is not the boyhood of free thought: it is the old age and ultimate dissolution of free thought.

It is vain for bishops and pious big wigs to discuss what things will happen if wild scepticism runs its course. It has run its course. It is vain for eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths that will be revealed if once we see free thought begin. We have seen it end. It has no more questions to ask; it has questioned itself.

You cannot call up any wilder vision than a city in which men ask themselves if they have any selves. You cannot fancy a more sceptical world than that in which men doubt if there is a world.

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