The gratitude owed to a creator
Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
An earlier passage about Dickens helps explain why the question turns from what life contains to the fact that life exists. In Charles Dickens: A Critical Study (first published 1906; inspected in Gutenberg’s transcription of the Dodd, Mead 1911 edition), chapter X opens by comparing the criticism of fictional characters with criticism of Creation. Readers may disapprove of Mr. Guppy or Mrs. Gamp, but could not themselves have invented them. Chesterton then names the sun and a child’s birth as examples of primary creation that provoke ‘a kind of incoherent gratitude.’ The parallel clarifies the fairy tale’s surplus of dragons: judging the quality of particular contents differs from acknowledging the gift of a world containing anything at all. Orthodoxy makes the recipient’s predicament more explicit. He feels gratitude before he can identify its recipient with confidence. This is an autobiographical description of an emotion preparing the way for a creator, rather than a completed proof that the emotion establishes one. Charles Dickens, chapter X, opening paragraph.
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