brute man

I thought I would use MSN Spaces as my blog, but for some reason I always come back to blogger, so it looks like I'm here to stay. I'm going to delete all my posts at the spaces site and use it for pictures only, but I couldn't let this one go, I like the quote too much. So this is taken from a December 29th post:

So, this book is quotable just about every page, and I have just about every page dog-eared (as if I will make it back) but I am currently reading this part, so it is this part I shall cite. What part, you ask, well, I'll get to that. One thing for sure, Chesterton is not writing this book as an apologetic ranting, most of it is an account of his own philosophical or theological assent. In that sense it has been a thick read, as he is way smarter than I, and I also had to become accustomed to his writing style as is necessary to comprehend anything he writes. So naturally when I get to the one part of the book where he stoops to an apologetic level, I became excited. And so I quote:

Many a sensible modern man must have abandoned Christianity under the pressure of three such converging convictions as these: first, that men, with their shape, structure, and sexuality, are, after all, very much like beasts, a mere variety of the animal kingdom... The only objection to this (I discover) is that it is untrue. If you leave off looking at books about beasts and men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then (if you have any humour or imagination, any sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will observe that the startling thing is not how like man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It is the monstrous scale of his divergence that requires an explanation. That man and brute are like is, in a sense, a truism; but that being so like they should then be so insanely unlike, that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape has hands is far less interesting to the philosopher than the fact that having hands he does next to nothing with them; does not play knuckle-bones or the violin; does not carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of barbaric architecture and debased art. But elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory even in a rococo style; camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes. Certain modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a civilization; but that very truth only reminds us that it is an inferior civilization. Who ever found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of celebrated ants? Who has seen a bee-hive carved with the images of gorgeous queens of old? No; the chasm between man and other creatures may have a natural explanation, but it is a chasm. All other animals are tame animals; following the rugged respectability of the tribe or type. All other animals are domestic animals; man alone is ever undomestic, either as a profligate or a monk.

Ahh, I love it; "camels do not paint even bad pictures, though equipped with the material of many camel's-hair brushes." Chesterton makes me laugh and makes me think, sometimes both until they hurt. Glory Hallelujah.