Category Archives: Prose

For once we saw through a glass, darkly; but now, not at all. ✟ These insights will, perhaps, be least surprising to the bespectacled among us, for they alone have cultivated the habit of seeing the world through non-reflective glass. That is, they see through their glasses, rather than the mere reflections of their pupils;Continue reading “Upon Reflection”

“It is incomprehensible to me that any thinker can calmly call himself a modernist. He might as well call himself a Thursdayite.” – G. K. Chesterton, The Case for the Ephemeral, 1908 “[The Catholic Church] is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.” –Continue reading “Against Modernism”

“The paradox of … chivalry [is] that the weaker a thing is the more it should be respected, that the more indefensible a thing is the more it should appeal to us for a certain kind of defence.” – G. K. Chesterton, Heretics ✟ It was Pope Leo XIII who famously wrote, “the world hasContinue reading “Against Feminism”

Now the faith is old and the Devil bold Exceedingly bold indeed. And the masses of doubt that are floating about Would smother a mortal creed. – Hilaire Belloc, Pelagian Drinking Song ✟ If you are like me (which I hope you aren’t, for it is becoming an increasingly unenviable position), you cannot help butContinue reading “Left Brain”

But lo, within that ancient place  Science had reared her iron crown,  And the great cloud of steam went up  That telleth where she takes a town. Modern Elfland, G.K. Chesterton, 1927 ✟ I’m sure we are all familiar with Pavlov’s dog. I’m also sure that we have all missed its meaning. The truth ofContinue reading “Pavlov’s God”

It is apparent, I think, that in our time, truth is a concept very much under attack. And I do not mean the sense in which it has always been under attack, among the ancients or the medievals. In the great debates of the past, every man stood for the truth; he was very oftenContinue reading “Against Moral Relativism”

Likelier the barricades shall blare Slaughter below and smoke above, And death and hate and hell declare That men have found a thing to love. – G. K. Chesterton, The Napoleon of Notting Hill, 1904 ✟ When men really love a thing, they will sacrifice themselves for it. Otherwise, it is no love at all,Continue reading “Against Pacifism”

“Civilisation always consists in dressing oneself, not undressing.“ – Nicolás Gómez Dávila Of all his many faults, perhaps Rousseau’s greatest hypocrisy was on the matter of accoutrement. Here we have a man who, by all accounts, had a flair for fashion, extolling the virtues of the naked man. Nowhere is the difference between natural manContinue reading “Heavy Casualties”