G.K. Chesterton: The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason

The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason….

A Christian is only restricted in the same sense that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think Christianity false and continue to be a Christian; and the atheist cannot think atheism false and continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, there is a very special sense in which materialism has more restrictions than spiritualism…

The Christian is quite free to believe that there is a considerable amount of settled order and inevitable development in the universe. But the materialist is not allowed to admit into his spotless machine the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle…

…Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid.

— G. K. Chesterton

Cited from Orthodoxy (New York: John Lane Company, 1908), 32, 40-41, 48-50.

Pure rationalism absence of any wonder is truly madness, whereas reason joined with imagination opens us to truth. Taking the chair of skepticism then going on with the task of rational analyzing life, reducing it all down to basic particles, then organizing them all into a coherent system never really liberates a person. It entraps the rational in a mechanicalistic world driven by unguided purposeless processes. A rationalist is a rationalist not because he thinks, but he thinks because that capacity just so happens to be the way all his basic particles evolved together into his being. No maker to putting it all together. No telos or purpose. It all just happened that way. But truly rational people can be open to an enchanted universe. They can open themselves to paradox, mystery, and imagination. The Christian keeps reason, never dispenses with rational thought, but remains open to mystery, and experiences revelation. Insanity, for Chesterton, is not having too little reason but too much reason divorced from everything else (love, wonder, faith).

Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874-1936) was a Roman Catholic writer, journalist, poet, and Christian apologist. Chesterton’s is renowned for the Father Brown detective stories. His most notable works on Christian thought include Heresy (1905), Orthodoxy (1908), and The Everlasting Man (1925).