The biblical reversal inside the gravity joke
Satan fell by the force of gravity.
The last sentence compresses two kinds of falling. Luke 10:18 has Christ say, in the King James Version, ‘I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.’ Luke 14:11 gives the moral reversal: self-exaltation ends in abasement, while humility is exalted. The Magnificat similarly joins the scattering of the proud with the lowering of rulers and raising of the lowly (Luke 1:51–53). These are scriptural parallels, not evidence that Chesterton is quoting one verse verbatim. Luke, KJV.
The joke's further premise is traditional rather than stated in Luke's lightning image. Aquinas argues that an angel's first sin must be pride: a refusal of the subjection owed to a superior (Summa theologiae I, question 63, article 2). The inspected English witness is the Dominican Fathers' second revised edition of 1920, reproduced by New Advent; the medieval Summa was composed in the thirteenth century. Aquinas, I.63.2.
Chesterton turns moral gravity—self-importance—into physical gravity. His paradox therefore does more than decorate an argument about cheerfulness: the apparently ascending ambition of pride becomes a downward movement. The powerful can fall precisely through their sense of their own elevation, continuing the chapter's argument that high position provides no exemption from corruption.
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