The Fortress of Rationalism

"Even Mr. H.G. Wells has half spoken in its language; saying that one should test acts not like a thinker, but like an artist, saying, "I feel this curve is right," or "that line shall go thus." They are all excited; and well they may be. For by this doctrine of the divine authority of will, they think they can break out of the doomed fortress of rationalism. They think they can escape." G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy

Once upon a time a gathering of enlightened fellows came upon an abandoned palace and, upon seeing the tattered banner of Rationalism, eagerly went inside. As soon as they had all entered they were met by a ghost whose name was Sophist, who told them that he would welcome the fellowship and clean the palace for them and be their servant if only they would agree to keep him fed on beliefs and the arguments on which they rested. The fellows heartily agreed to the deal, and one of them produced a book of philosophy to offer to the phantom. Then Sophist took from the text about ninety large pages of fine print about Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and with a bitter laughter it swallowed them up and spat back a smoky cloud of musical nonsense which was full of bad logic hiding behind long words and flippant sarcasm. The enlightened friends thought the cloud highly amusing.

So the wanderers settled down in the palace, and for many months they fed their host on history, on poetry, on religion, and on philosophy. Then, after he had grown quite distinct and sonorous from his many meals, Sophist went to one of the portraits, took the hand of the  lady depicted there, and helped her to step down out of her flat prison into the restored halls. She came before the new masters of the palace and told them that her name was Naturalism. She told them that she had before been called a witch and that she had secret powers (though the actual truth was that she had only tricks which could be performed by anyone with sufficient tools and knowledge) and she told them also that she would use these powers however they saw fit if only they would permit her a room in the palace and the same freedom to roam the estate which they themselves possessed. The masters cheerfully complied, and she began her work at once.

Naturalism quickly filled the palace with fine luxuries to the delight of the moderns, and soon after she revived the goblin whose name was Industrialist and the nymph whose name was Utopia. As soon as he was again breathing, Industrialist went out to the gardens at the edge of the estate and began building up a new wing and then a guest house and then an amphitheater and then another wing and then a house for the workers that Sophist and Utopia had lured into the palace to be servants. In very little time, the palace was made to stretch out for miles and miles, and the smoke of its factories blotted out the sun, the light of which was hateful to Naturalist.

There was a time when the workers in the factories and the slaughterhouses began to murmur about justice and rights, but then Sophist raised up the twin bother of Industrialist, whose name was Socialist, and the two goblins got up on a stage and pretended to be at war. And when some of the masters who had set Naturalist loose and given food to her servant heard of the mumblings they were somewhat disturbed, but then Sophist whispered horrible lies to them about the cost of progress and the small minds of the poor and other dreadful things. He would not have dared to whisper such things before, because then they might have given the game away. But the fellows had been intoxicated by his smog for years by now, and they did not have anything in them firm enough to resist the phantom's lies. And as they nodded along, a witch named Eugenics and her brother whose name was Vivisector returned to life.

At long last, some of the masters became restless and uneasy. A few went into the library, but they found that Sophist had eaten anything worth reading. They asked "what am I?" but all they could find to answer them were books of anatomy and one little text about behavioral psychology, and these they found irrelevant. They asked why they were there, and they found many books on evolution, and the stars, and reproduction, but these were also irrelevant. They asked question after question, but any books that had even tried to answer those most human questions had already been fed to the ghost of the mansion. There was, of course, one name left for them to call upon which could break the power of Sophist. A few of the masters, driven to the most desperate of measures, invoked that name, and they escaped the doomed fortress. But most pretended they had forgotten it.

Then, when the remaining masters found the questions still confounding and worrying them, Sophist and Utopia went among them. The fellows asked their questions, and Sophist cheerily mocked the wisdom that lay behind them. Then each fellow would seize upon some bit of nonsense which the spirit had exhaled, and then Sophist would breath encouraging gibberish over that scrap. And Utopia went to anyone still human enough that they were not quite satisfied and pleasured them until they forget their concerns. And in this garden of twisted fancies, some poor fool uttered the words: "the will to power."

And then, with that dark incantation finally uttered, the iron locks broke away from the cellar doors. Like a wretched stream, scuttling horrors flowed out from the deep places of the estate. Goblins, ghouls, insectile creeps, gangrenous gnomes, mutated sprites, nameless shades, nightmarish bogies, and twisted fiends of every variety crawled across the polished floors. Behind the legion of bitter opportunists there came the ogres, the witches, and the giants who reveled in cruelty and who grew stronger in the suffering of the poor and the weak. And finally there came Ba'al into the house the masters and their former servants had prepared for him, and he did as he pleased and took what he liked.

Upon hearing the thunderous upheaval, the men and women of other lands turned to the ambassadors and businessmen of the estate. Sophist had given these things his breath, and they had taken it wherever they went. Everywhere they had found champions of every hearty creed, and these champions had argued with them long into the night. But now those champions said to them: "We have been patient and tolerant because we love truth and prize the trial of discourse which belongs to it. But now you have put truth aside and set savage might loose upon the lands. So go back to your king and repeat the last words we shall address to your kind: We will stop you. We will kill you."

"There is no reason in Eugenics, but there is plenty of motive. Its supporters are highly vague about its theory, but they will be painfully practical about its practice. And while I reiterate that many of its more eloquent agents are probably quite innocent instruments, there are some, even among Eugenists, who by this time know what they are doing. To them we shall not say, 'What is Eugenics?' or 'Where on earth are you going?' but only 'Woe unto you, hypocrites, that devour widows' houses and for a pretence use long words.'"  G.K. Chesterton in Eugenics and Other Evils

The Pilgrim at the Graveyard

Once upon a time there was a pilgrim who left his home and all that he could not carry on his back to seek Jerusalem. He went out through the city and walked for days without seeing the end of it. As he went he passed by many people talking and many televisions playing and many newspapers lying on the sidewalk. He spoke to many while he walked and asked if they knew they way to Jerusalem, and they laughed and told him to turn around. Some though there was no path. Some though he could reach it by any path, which was no help at all. Some told him there was a path, but it was a dark and wicked road and so they would not reveal it. And in all he heard and read he found this unwavering assumption that all he loved and clung to was a blatant lie. And a horrible suspicion began to creep into him. He did not know what discovery had been made, what brilliant experiment had been performed, what supercomputer had spat out such an undeniable formula, but he feared that if he encountered it then he would lose his dearest love.

And then one day he met a man who was a skeptic and a freethinker, and the pilgrim knew this because the freethinker told nearly everyone he met about it, just as the pilgrim told nearly everyone he met the place to which he was going. This was in part frightening and also a very great relief to the pilgrim because everyone else he had met had been too polite to tell him plainly why they thought his doctrines wrong and many were too polite to even tell him that they thought the doctrines wrong even when it was obvious that this was what they thought. It had confused the pilgrim very much that they thought it rude to advocate truth, and now he was happy to meet one who could at least tell him that secret, thought it might destroy all he loved. And so he asked the freethinker if he thought the Covenants wrong and why he thought as he did.

"Indeed," said the freethinker. "I do think they are wrong, and, as to why, I will do better than telling you. I will show you the decisive proof!"

So the freethinker took the pilgrim to a graveyard and led him to a marble statue of a bearded man sitting on a throne and of this place he said, "This is the graveyard of the gods. Here is Zeus, or Jupiter if you please. Here is the date of his birth, and here is the date of his death. Look around you, each of these were once worshiped as you worship the palestinian, and now they are all gathered and forgotten in this place. There are thousands of them here, thousands who were all believed to be eternal. That is why we know your god is dying. We have even reserved a plot for him over there."

Upon hearing this, the pilgrim was filled with joy and mirth which poured out of him in uproarious laughter. He said to his startled guide, "Thank you, kind sir. I had been nearly convinced until now that there was a secret discovery which would be my ruin. I had become afraid to say where I was going or to pray in any obvious manner. It was good for me to be made small and meek, but there is something about which I should be bold and loud, and you have set it free again."

Seeing that the freethinker did not understand, the pilgrim explained further. "You told me that Zeus was worshiped in the same way that the Nazarene is worshiped, but this is obviously not true. No one was ever told to save their life by spitting on the works of Homer and then chose instead to kiss them. And when the pagans went to other lands, they believed they had left their gods at home. And though Zeus was called immortal, he was not called timeless. He was born of Chronos and his wife, and before that he did not exist in any form. You have pretended that these are all the same as the I Am, but that is clearly nonsense. They are not all even the same as each other. That doll over there was a household god, and it was said that the god and the doll that represented it were one and the same. Ra's power stretched as far as the Nile, but that doll was not said to have power even at the other end of town. I tell you, spend one hour reading the facts of the case and you will know without doubt that they are not the same."

"And there is something else," said the pilgrim before the angry freethinker could object. "You said that you have prepared a plot for Adonai, and then I saw your chest puff up with pride. I think that you have supposed that it was skeptics who killed these gods and dug their graves, but that is wrong. Some of these died because their worshipers were killed, but that is not how Zeus was killed. I know who killed Zeus, and He is the Nazarene. But He did not kill him as those household gods from Mecca were killed. The splendor and might of Jupiter was laid to waste by the weakness of the martyrs. The pagan worshipers of Jupiter killed the worshipers of the I Am again and again until the blood of the martyrs washed the idols out into the sea. Many of the pagans gave up oppressing and joined the oppressed believers, and the rest died of exhaustion without any successors. Nothing they told their children could convince them that Zeus was more substantial than the Jewish Messiah from the eastern land. That is how this one died, and many others died in the same way. Some others like Quetzalcoatl were killed in war by wicked men desiring power and loot, but there are men like that everywhere and dwelling in all great creeds. And to be honest, Quetzalcoatl was an unusually wicked idol that wanted for a quick and decisive death. And while there are many that were killed in that way, the greatest of these dead gods were put down by slaves and martyrs."

So the pilgrim thanked the freethinker for showing him this field of victory and for renewing his faith, and with great vigor and eagerness the pilgrim set out again in search of Jerusalem.

Toxic Fright

     Martha Atwood stared down at her coffee anxiously as her friends and husband chatted around her. There was Claire, Joan, Ed, Logan, and Ted all together in the living room with her and Evan. A few questions came her way, and she managed to answer them briefly, but even so she remained on the outside. She spun the facts around in her head in the hopes that some answer might suddenly come out from them. There was the party, the sickness, the car, and the watcher. She tried to think of something else, some clue that could make sense of the riddle, but there was nothing. She had wracked her brain for hours before, but she had never produced a single break from normality that might complete her puzzle.

     “Martha,” said Claire suddenly, luring the woman out of her contemplation. “You know, you don’t have to stay here with us.” Martha looked up to see her friend’s eyes shine with concern. “I think we can all tell you’d rather be alone, and I don’t know about anyone else, but I promise my feelings aren’t too delicate to allow you a little solitude. None of us will mind if you go back to your bedroom, and if you want your living room back we can always head out for fast food or something.”

     The young mother offered what she hoped was a soft, sincere smile, and said, “I’m fine. I’ve just got a lot of things on my mind.”

     As Martha looked around the room at her guests, she caught her husband staring at her suspiciously. Almost immediately, she glanced away. She hadn’t told Evan the full extent of her suspicions, but she still had admitted that she believed someone was going after their son. He’d said she was being paranoid. Their friends seemed to have felt the same way about her concern any time it slipped out in their presence. Even before Connor had gotten sick she had always come off as overprotective. She had no doubt that they were all wondering why they had been invited over while the child was in bed with a fever.

     “Actually, it was kind of my idea for you all to be here,” Martha said.

     The revelation took nearly everyone by surprise. They had all thought that this was Evan’s idea. They had no idea how hard she’d had to work and how long she’d had to argue in order to make this happen. They had no idea of the focus, the purpose, which filled her at that moment.

     “I don’t really know how to say this, but…think somebody poisoned Connor,” said Martha, spilling out the last four words in one quick breath. As she had expected, the whole room exploded in shock and confusion.

    “What do you mean? You think he swallowed a chemical?”

     “Did the doctor tell you something?”

     “Poisoned? Like poisoned poisoned??”

     Martha raised her hands, pleading for silence, but it was only after the cacophony had run its course that she seemed able to get a word in. Finally, when the room was quiet enough she blurted out, “What I mean is that I think Connor is sick because somebody intentionally poisoned him. The last time he was like this was at New Years for a few days, and it didn’t really fit with any bugs or flus going around. And it was exactly like this. And then there were the car and the watcher…”

     Martha’s voice faded as she realized she was losing her coherency. It had been a hundred little details that had instilled in her this conviction, but she could hardly remember half of them and most of the little things she could remember lost all their strength when taken out of their context in time and experience and put into crude, inadequate words. She had to remember the big clues and explain them as well as she could. There was the party, then the sickness, then the watcher, then the car. Party. Sickness. Watcher. Car.

     The young mother took out her inhaler as she felt her breathing slipping out of her control, sucked in a gasp of medication, and resumed her explanation. “I saw someone standing outside and staring at our house in the middle of the night,” she said. “I think I saw him four times, maybe five, over the weeks after Connor got sick the first time. They never hung around long enough for me to get a picture or even to show Evan, but they were definitely not just walking by. They stood there across the street, wearing a hoodie and sunglasses just like anyone who didn’t want to be recognized. Sometimes they even left little notes on our lawn or the sidewalk, so I wasn’t just seeing things.” Martha paused for a breath, and she went for her inhaler again. She realized the moment she pressed down on the device that it could make her look even more frantic, but at least no one had interrupted yet. “And then two days before Connor got sick again, someone nearly ran him over. He didn’t get hit, but it was only a difference of seconds, and they were going way too fast for a neighborhood. So, uh, I guess that’s mostly it.”

     Martha looked around nervously at her audience, readying herself for criticism. She was not disappointed.

     “Martha,” said Claire slowly. “I’m sure this has been very stressful for you, but I just don’t see murder in any of this. I mean, the illness is strange, especially the fact that he got it again, but human health is very complicated and it does weird things all the time without us looking for some evil meddler. And it’s terrifying that Connor was in so much danger, but there are plenty of reckless drivers who really are just being stupid. None of it means anything”

     Martha nodded, acutely aware of the fact that she hadn’t said a word about the watcher. It was perfectly obvious why: Claire had been avoiding calling her crazy. The young mother, however, was not so protective of her dignity as to let that shadowy figure be ignored.

     “You’re forgetting about the watcher,” Martha said quietly. “The other stuff is just weird, but he’s something else. He’s—if it is a he—the one who ties it all together.”

     This time it was her husband who responded. “Honey,” he said. Evan never used such cliché terms of endearment in normal talk, even when they were being intimate. He only spoke like that when he thought she was being irrational. “I never saw anyone out there, but I did see those few notes. There wasn’t any pattern to them as far as I could tell, and I couldn’t see any connection between them and Connor. One of them was a couple numbers, and the others were just a few random words. Someone wrote them with some private meaning they were supposed to remind him of, and I could have come up with a dozen normal meanings behind each one that had nothing to do with us. In fact, when you showed me them I’m pretty sure I did come up with them. As for the actual person, I imagine I see things in the dark all the time when I know there’s nothing. That’s the way the dark works. No one’s going to think you’re insane if you admit that there might not have been anyone at all.” He put his hand on hers in an attempt to be comforting, and said, “I know it’s hard to see our son being so miserable with nothing you can do about it, and it helps to think there’s something else behind it that you can fight, but he really is just sick. He’ll go through all kinds of trouble in life, but most of it really is just little unhappy accidents—normal, good things that come together in such a way and at such a time that something bad and frustrating pops up. I promise, there’s no evil plot.”

     Martha held her tongue. Everyone assumed that this was about her being scared or frustrated. Why was it so hard to accept that when she said someone had poisoned her son she was talking about anything other than her feelings?

     “Besides,” quipped Ed. “Why would someone want to hurt a little boy? And even if they did, do you really think they’d be so clumsy about it? How can someone be sneaky enough to poison a child and stupid enough to get the dose wrong? It should take barely a teaspoon of the stuff to kill someone so little.”

     Ed looked around the room as if expecting to be congratulated on his logic, but instead he got glares from half the room letting him know he had said something very, very stupid. Martha knew the feeling. She was trying to come up with a response, a defense for her suspicions. She had no doubt that there was a poisoner, but she didn’t know what she could add to her original case. She had put everything worth saying into that first explanation, and they had acted like it was nothing. In fact, the one clue that made the case really compelling, the watcher, had been assumed to be a hallucination. They had never even considered supposing him to be real.

     “I think,” said Joan. “That we’re the ones who would harm a little boy. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it Martha?” She paused, looking the mother straight in the eye with the same sickly compassion as everyone else. “You think he was poisoned at the New Year’s Eve party, which makes us the prime suspects.”

     Finally, her friends let their concern slip for a moment to show the surprise and incredulity with which they had been regarding her all along. For her part, Martha simply nodded and then weakly added, “They do say when a child’s hurt or taken it’s almost always by someone they know.”

     She had thought that would do something. Maybe the villain would do something stupid, or people would start telling her why it couldn’t be them. The situation would change, new information would be added, and she might get closer to the truth. Instead, an uneasy silence swallowed the room, which no one seemed brave enough to break.

     After several seconds of emptiness, Martha got up and said that she needed to use the bathroom. Perhaps afraid of having to defend his wife’s behavior, Evan similarly excused himself by saying that he should go check on Connor. As soon as she closed the door, Martha’s whole body started to shake with frustration. Her hands knotted themselves into eager fists as she struggle to suppress an angry shriek. Then her lung started to rebel, and the woman made again for her inhaler. As the minor fit passed, she sat down on the toilet seat—the lid was down, of course—and tried to figure out what to do.

     It was becoming increasingly obvious that she wasn’t going to catch the culprit here. She had been looking the whole time for some hint in her guests, but even after everything that had been said there was still nothing to make the answer any clearer. She had thought that this was like some puzzle or game in which she just needed to find the right question to trick the poisoner out of hiding, but she should have known that life didn’t work like that. She knew who had spoken and who hadn’t, but the poisoner might just as easily keep quiet to avoid giving clues as speak up to discredit her. She had noted the expressions of surprise and fear, but surprise and fear are entirely normal when one is told that a friend believes there’s a villain about. Her trap had been poorly laid from the very start. But as long as the poisoner was loose her son was in danger. The only solution was to give up for now, watch diligently, and thwart the enemy in the midst of their scheme. It was dangerous, but it was also the only strategy that could work.

     As quickly as she could manage, and with an unpleasant sense of defeat, Martha went back out to tell her friends she was sorry. She told them that after listening to them she now realized how silly she had been, and that she was embarrassed and ashamed at having accused them all so horribly. Finally, after everyone said just how all right it was, she let her guests know she was going back to the bedroom to work through everything. She left with one final note of frustration as she failed to spot any hint of triumph in the faces of the suspects.

     Finally, the young mother lay down in her bed. She knew there was nothing more she could do in that moment, and she tried to put the issue out of her mind as she listened to her husband and her friends in the living room. They probably wanted to leave, but they also wanted to process what had just happened, and so they hung around for another hour or so chatting quietly. Exhaustion and curiosity were struggling for dominance in Martha as she listened in to the conversations. In fact, she was on the verge of sleep when Claire quietly pushed open the door and went over to her.

     “I’m sorry about Connor,” said Claire in a barely audible whisper. “It was never about hurting him, only about scaring you.”

     The woman strode further into the room until she was looking straight down at Martha, whose eyes widened madly.

     “I really thought you would be more careful with all that paranoia, but it was actually really easy to grab your inhaler while you were setting up. I wouldn’t hope for any leftovers for evidence, though, this particular substance dissipates fairly quickly. It was the main reason I needed you so worked up; I needed to make sure it didn’t vanish before you took enough to be lethal. Oh, that’ll be paralysis you’re experiencing right now, by the way,” said Claire with a note of smugness. “The heart attack will be coming up shortly. Not surprising considering what everyone just heard, and also given your medical history. It’s surprising how very unhealthy guilt can be.” She leaned down so that she was whispering directly into Martha’s ear. “I know what you did all those years ago, before you ever knew my name. You were right to expect an enemy.”

The Monster in the Closet

It is childish to see a monster in the closet
But that does not make it wrong
The little boy is right
To think that there are monsters

There are dragons on the winds
Who burn villages to the ground
Who kidnap fair maidens
Who amass for themselves piles
Of useless, glittering gold

There are goblins aplenty
Practical, grim-faced, grumbling things
Who are immune to all beauty
Who are deaf to all pleas
They have built sweat shops
They have ruled the slums
As firmly as they have ruled legislatures
And there is not one among them
Who would not kill their king to steal his crown
But they are practical creatures
So they have comradeship without friendship
And laws without loyalty
For they love to crush bones and steal gold
And they can do these things more easily
When they are in an army

There are giants roaming about
They take treasures like the others
But they love not luxury
They love only power
They eat men and women
Not because of any taste
But for the sake of power
To subjugate an unfathomable soul
To reduce it to a mere meal
To prove their superiority
There are ubermensch at large
And their strength is their only love

There are hags and ogres
Isolated fiends without treasures
With relatively meager strength
Filled with bitterness
Steeped in sweet misery
Full of the sickly pleasures
Of resentment and revenge

And there are subtler things
Creatures that whisper in the dark
That lure travelers off of cliffs
Monsters that poke with venomous claws
At natural pleasures and delights
Until those things become inflamed
Until they grow huge and misshapen
Until they develop into obsession and addiction

You will say that the monster is not in the closet
It is in you and in me
It is in an office or patrolling a street
But you are missing something
I do not have a monster
I am monstrous
And the thing in the closet
Is something other
As the people in offices are not

The monster in the closet
Is a thing without love
It is with the sweat shop owner
But it is not him
It is in the winds
It is an implacable fiend
It is not instinct or tendency
But it does exploit those things
It organizes them
It builds a machine from them
An interplay of egos
In which it makes its home

And there is another thing to note
It is in the child's closet
Because it hates the child
We have known so since Moloch
It does not just feed on weakness and innocence
It hates them
It sees them and it seethes with rage
And it is also afraid
It remembers Jack
The weak have often killed the strong
And the plans of grim practicality
Have been wrecked by stupid, cheerful innocence

But it is in the closet
Because there is something else
Some other implacable thing
Something killed a thousand times over
Which each time refuses to remain in the grave
The monster hides in the closet
It builds a camouflage of decency
A barricade of rationales
And plays every magic trick it can
To make everyone look the other way
Because it is not safe in the light of day

So do not be surprised
When the monster comes
And offers anything you wish for
In exchange for the meager price
Of someone else's firstborn child