G.K. Chesterton on the Magic of Monotony
*Originally written by G.K. Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy. Translated into modern English by Modern Saints.
All lofty materialism that dominates the modern mind ultimately rests upon one assumption, and it is a false assumption:
It is assumed that if a thing goes on repeating itself, then it is probably dead, like a piece of clockwork. Some people feel that if the universe was personal, then its behaviors would vary, and if the sun were alive it would dance.
This is false even in relation to things we know about. Variation in human activity, for example, is not brought about by life, but by death, because our strength and desire are dying down. A man varies his behavior because of some kind of failure or fatigue. He gets into a taxi because he is tired of walking, or he walks because he is tired of sitting still.
But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never got tired of going to Islington, then he might go to Islington as regularly as the River Thames goes downstream to Sheerness. The speed and bliss of his life would look like the stillness of death.
The sun rises every morning, but I don’t rise every morning. My varying behavior isn’t due to my activity, however, but to my lack of activity. To use a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises every day because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life.
What I am trying to explain can be seen, for example, in children, when they find some game or joke they especially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically because he has too much life, not a lack of life. It is because children have abundant energy, because they are fierce and free in spirit, that they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again,” and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead.
Grown-up people aren’t strong enough to exult in monotony. But maybe God is strong enough to exult in monotony.
It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun. And every evening, “Do it again” to the moon.
Maybe it is not necessary that all daisies be alike. Maybe God makes every daisy separately but has never gotten tired of making them. Maybe God has the eternal appetite of infancy—for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.
Maybe the repetition in Nature isn’t a simple reoccurrence; maybe it is a theatrical encore. Maybe Heaven gave an encore to the bird who laid an egg. If the human being becomes pregnant and gives birth to a human child instead of a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, maybe the reason is not that we are trapped in an animal destiny without life or purpose. Instead, maybe our sad little play has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry balcony, and that at the end of every human opera, humanity is called again and again to sing encore after encore.
Repetition may be chosen to go on for millions of years, and at any moment it may stop. Humans may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each newborn baby be their absolutely last appearance.
This was my first conviction, made by the shock of my childish emotions colliding with modern thought. I had always vaguely felt the real things of the world to be miracles in the sense that they were wonderful. Now I began to think of them as miracles in the more technical sense that they were willful. What I mean is that they were, or might be, repeated decisions of some will.
To put it simply, I had always believed that the world involved magic. Now I thought that it may involve a magician. And this pointed to a profound emotion that had always been present and subconscious. I had always felt that this world of ours has a purpose, and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I felt that life was primarily a story, and if there is a story, there is a storyteller.
