McCabe and the dispute over a diminished human life
Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, as, for instance, Mr. McCabe
McCabe is an established interlocutor, not an invented specimen of a gloomy unbeliever. In Heretics (first published 1905), chapter XVI, Chesterton had already defended his manner of arguing against an appeal by McCabe in Christianity and Rationalism on Trial. The inspected witness is Project Gutenberg #470, whose source note identifies the twelfth John Lane edition (1919). Chesterton quotes McCabe treating the turn from religion toward secularism as a momentous decision about human happiness; he also expressly respects McCabe’s sincerity and intellectual virtue. Those concessions survive here in ‘able and sincere.’ Heretics, XVI
The earlier reply explains what the present accusation means. Chesterton says the danger he foresees is a decrease in life and its motive power, rather than an outbreak of undisciplined sensuality. He then contrasts the spectator who buys a ticket to a professional ballet with the ordinary person who dances. His charge is that McCabe’s civilization progressively delegates human activities to specialists. The earlier chapter ends by comparing the universe to fireworks and a concealed festivity. The current paragraph compresses that dispute into the contrast between a working explanatory mechanism and the lived experiences of mothers, lovers, fighters, and frightened sailors. On this reading, ‘leaving everything out’ means failing to do justice to the character and significance of experience, not failing to count particular physical objects. That last distinction is an interpretation of Chesterton’s argument, not a concession independently obtained from McCabe. Heretics, XVI, paragraphs beginning ‘All this, however, is a parenthesis’ and ‘I do not know that I can express this more shortly’ through the chapter’s conclusion
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