Davidson's Theatrocrat: materialist poetry behind the philosophy of will
He publishes a short play with several long prefaces.
The identifiable target is John Davidson's The Theatrocrat: A Tragic Play of Church and Stage (1905). Its introductory prose includes sections on Heaven and Hell, an Interlude, and God and Sin. The dedication urges the incoming generation to disregard inherited prohibitions and trust action; this closely fits Chesterton's description. The witness inspected is Project Gutenberg's transcription of the London E. Grant Richards 1905 edition, not a later collected edition. Read the dedication and introduction.
Yet Davidson's position is more specific than an unrestricted cult of choosing. In the introduction he treats the various cosmic Wills as competing metaphors and grounds mind and imagination in Matter. His announced replacement for religious imagination is a material universe becoming conscious in humanity. Chesterton's grouping therefore captures the emphasis on creative action while obscuring the materialism behind it. Davidson even envisages rejecting inherited doctrines down to Nietzsche's: this is evidence against treating Chesterton's tentative Nietzschean genealogy as a demonstrated line of transmission. The identification is strongly supported by the book's format and language; Chesterton does not supply its title.
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