# A gardener's vision need not come from the wilderness

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH07.P004](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH07.P004/#char=0,49): "We cannot, then, get the ideal itself from nature"

The distinction is between explaining how moral judgments arose and establishing which judgments deserve allegiance. A natural history of a desire does not, by itself, show that we ought to satisfy it. That is why the paragraph asks for a vision rather than another account of evolution. Its temporary exclusion of God also matters: Chesterton is asking what reform requires before returning to the Christian account of its goal. In this chapter, the vision must first become fixed and composite; Christianity subsequently presents Eden and a divinely composed city as answers. [Chesterton, *Orthodoxy*, first published 1908, chapter VII, especially the paragraphs beginning ‘When I had written this down’ and ‘This, then, is our second requirement’](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769).

T. H. Huxley's *Evolution and Ethics—Prolegomena* (1894), distinct from his 1893 Romanes Lecture and inspected in the electronic transcription of *Collected Essays* IX, provides a close comparison. A gardener works toward a mentally held standard and must continually maintain it against surrounding processes. Yet human intelligence remains a product of nature. Thus rejecting nature as a sufficient moral authority need not entail denying a natural origin for the mind that judges it. The agreement does not establish that Chesterton borrowed from Huxley, or that Huxley supplied Chesterton's eventual Christian ideal. [Huxley, *Prolegomena*, sections II–IV, pp. 9–14](https://mathcs.clarku.edu/huxley/CE9/E-EProl.html).

## Sources

- [G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908), Project Gutenberg ebook 16769](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769), Chapter VII, The Eternal Revolution; assigned paragraph and paragraphs beginning When I had written this down and This, then, is our second requirement; inspected electronic witness, not a first-edition facsimile
- [T. H. Huxley, Evolution and Ethics—Prolegomena (1894)](https://mathcs.clarku.edu/huxley/CE9/E-EProl.html), Collected Essays IX electronic transcription, sections II–IV, retained printed page markers 9–14

Revision 1 · 2026-11-07 · https://glosses.org/a/a_gnkz6ldp/