# The glass man before Chesterton

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH02.P004](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH02.P004/#char=498,576): "A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass."

The glass man belongs to an older repertoire of examples of delusion. In the First Meditation, Descartes lists people who believe themselves kings, earthenware-headed, or made of glass. He initially refuses to model his inquiry on them, then moves to dreams, which supply ordinary sleepers with comparably improbable experiences. See [Meditation I](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Philosophical_Works_of_Decartes/Volume_1/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy/Meditation_1), the passage beginning ‘And how could I deny’, and the following two paragraphs. The work first appeared in Latin in 1641; this is the Haldane–Ross English translation in *The Philosophical Works of Descartes*, volume I (1911), whose prefatory note identifies the 1642 Latin second edition as its base.

The resemblance does not establish that Chesterton borrowed from Descartes. It clarifies his alteration of the familiar example: his subject is the difference between experiencing an impossible identity as fact and enjoying it as imaginative incongruity. The glass man supplies that contrast; neither its earlier appearance nor Chesterton’s assertion demonstrates that people experiencing delusions necessarily find their lives dull.

## Sources

- [Descartes, Meditation I, Haldane–Ross translation](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Philosophical_Works_of_Decartes/Volume_1/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy/Meditation_1), Passages beginning ‘And how could I deny’, ‘But they are mad’, and ‘At the same time I must remember’
- [Prefatory Note to the Meditations](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Philosophical_Works_of_Decartes/Volume_1/Meditations_on_First_Philosophy), First two paragraphs: first publication in 1641; translation based on the 1642 second edition

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