The Secret Plot Of The Elephants

G.K. Chesterton, in his book entitled Orthodoxy, compares "Elfland" (the land of our popular fairy tales) to "The Modern World" (which is constructed by the scientific "materialist" of his day). He suggests that the inhabitants of Elfland (or Fairyland as he sometimes refers to it) are more reasonable than the inhabitants of The Modern World in that there is a distinct difference between "true rationalism," which is held absolutely in fairy tales, and what is called "The Laws of Nature," which are the products of The Modern World. He claims that imagination is the test by which we discover true rationalism - and he suggests that scientific "laws" fail on this point.

In his own words:

They [those of the Modern World] talk as if trees bearing fruit were just as necessarily a fact as is the fact that two trees plus one tree equals three trees. But it is not the same thing. There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland - which is the test of the imagination. You cannot imagine two and one being anything but three. However you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit. You can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail. These [scientific materialists] speak much of a man named Newton, who was hit by an apple and discovered a "law." But [these scientific materialists] cannot be made to see the distinction between a true law - a law of reason - and the mere fact of apples falling. If the apple hit Newton's nose, then Newton's nose hit the apple. That is a true necessity because we cannot conceive of the one occurring without the other. But surely we can imagine the apple not falling on his nose and instead we can fancy it flying ardently through the air to hit some other nose, of which it had a more definite dislike. We have always, in fairy tales, kept this sharp distinction between the science of mental relations - in which there really are laws - and the science of physical facts - in which there are no laws, but only weird repetitions. (Minor editing for readability.)

He continues by pointing out that the scientist is very much like the sentimental young lover, because both are fond (even so far as to use as a trump card) of the connection between things. Again Chesterton says,

The man of science says, "Cut the stalk, and the apple will fall"; but he says it as if the first idea really led to the second idea. The witch in the fairy tale says, "Blow the horn, and the ogre's castle will fall"; but she does not say it as if it were something in which the "effect" obviously arose out of the "cause". The scientific man...talks as if the connection of two strange things physically connected them philosophically [and thus] the ordinarily scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is...soaked and swept away by mere association. He has so often seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if there must be some dreamy, tender connection between the two ideas, whereas there is none. A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate the moon from lost love; so the materialistic scientist is unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. The sentimentalist might shed tears at the smell of appleblossoms, because it reminds him of his boyhood. So the materialistic professor is also a sentimentalist because appleblossoms remind him of apples. (Again, minor editing for readability.)

He goes on to suggest that we have been hoodwinked into believing that repetitions make things certain, when in fact they really ought to make things more startling. We live day after day without the slightest concern that a comet may hit the Earth and destroy us, but not because it is a "Law" that comets never hit the Earth, but because it would be a "miracle" (in the bad sense) if it did. For this reason, every comet-free day is "weird" - as in "Isn't it weird that in all of these days, no comet has it the Earth and destroyed us?" And here is one of my favorite passages from Chesterton:

Now, the mere repetition of things made them more weird to me rather than more rational. It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society. So, one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. (Again, minor editing.)

(As has been noted, I have made minor changes for readability - Chesterton wrote this in 1908 and so there are times when the language is a bit out of date. I admit I have never edited something in this manner before, but I promise that with all good faith, I tried to keep the original meaning at all times. However, if you would like to read the original, the link in the opening paragraph will send you to a digital copy of this book in its entirety. All quotes from the above post were taking from Chapter Four, "The Ethics of Elfland".)

posted by Headless-in-GR @ 7/30/2006 04:25:00 PM