Wednesday, 01 April 2009

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  "Suffer Fools Gladly": G. K. Chesterton on Fools, Foolishness, and Folly

  "The foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom," observed the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 1:25), going on to add, logically enough, "The wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight" (1 Cor. 3:19). In short: You're not as smart as you think you are, so get over yourself already. In fact, it couldn't hurt you to have a good laugh at yourself. Nobody's so wise that they aren't above being foolish, even if we don't compare them to the Omniscience.
  

  April Fool's Day is a great opportunity for us to stop taking ourselves so seriously. And nobody knew better how to avoid taking himself seriously than that monumental English man of letters, G. K. Chesterton--monumental in intellect, reputation, writing, and girth. Here, for your enjoyment and edification, are a few quotations from Chesterton's inexhaustible pen on the subject of fools, folly, and what to do about them.
  

  
  

  Chesterton with a kindred spirit
  
  

  I daresay that there are a good many fools who can call me a friend and also (a more chastening thought) a good many friends who can call me a fool. 

  (Autobiography, ch. VI)
  
  

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  Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of the equality of men.  

  (Heretics, ch. XII)
  
  

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  We shall never make anything of democracy until we make fools of ourselves. For if a man cannot make a fool of himself, we may be quite certain that the effort is superfluous.
  

  (The Defendant, “A Defense of Heraldry”)
  
  

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  There is an apostolic injunction to suffer fools gladly. We always lay the stress on the word “suffer,” and interpret the passage as one urging resignation. It might be better, perhaps, to lay the stress upon the word “gladly,” and make our familiarity with fools a delight, and almost a dissipation. Nor is it necessary that our pleasure in fools (or at least in great and godlike fools) should be merely satiric or cruel. The great fool is he in whom we cannot tell which is the conscious and which the unconscious humour; we laugh with him and laugh at him at the same time. An obvious instance is that of ordinary and happy marriage. A man and a woman cannot live together without having against each other a kind of everlasting joke. Each has discovered that the other is a fool, but a great fool. This largeness, this grossness and gorgeousness of folly is the thing which we all find about those with whom we are in intimate contact; and it is the one enduring basis of affection, and even of respect.
  

  (Charles Dickens: A Critical Study, ch. 10)
  
  

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  The man who cannot appreciate it goes along with the man who cannot appreciate beef or claret or a game with children or a brass band. They are afraid of making fools of themselves, and are unaware that that transformation has already been triumphantly effected.  
  

  (Twelve Types, “The Position of Sir Walter Scott.”)
  
  

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  ‘…He’s a pretty rotten fool and failure, on his own confession.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Father Brown. ‘I’m rather fond of people who are fools and failures on their own confession.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ snapped the other.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Father Brown, wistfully, ‘it’s because so many people are fools and failures without any confession.’

  (The Scandal of Father Brown, “The Pursuit of Mr. Blue”)
  
  

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