The Dawn Treader

Do you have a sense of wonder?  I bet you do.  Honestly, even the harshest skeptic has a deeply embedded sense of wonder.  Ever read Sagan's work?  This famous atheist was filled with wonder that he so eloquently expressed before his death in 1996.  Whether a Christian or an atheist, the ancient instinct of astonishment seems to be something we all share.

It was a sense of wonder that ultimately drove Chesterton towards orthodoxy and away from the towering materialism of his day.  Chesterton, like many of us, first learned about life from fairy tales.  He tried to set aside his fairy-tale philosophy, however, when he grew up.  He tried to embrace the modernism of his day.  It didn't work.  He discovered that modernism was wrong and fairy tales were right.

How were the fairy tales right?  Why do fairy tales work better than skeptical modern thought?

First, fairy tales are eminently logical.  Logic is strictly observed.  The laws of thought and reason are in full force.  As Chesterton writes,

"If the Ugly Sisters are older than Cinderella, it is necessary that Cinderella is younger than the Ugly Sisters.  If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the father of Jack.  Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne; and we in fairy-land submit."

It's true.  Try to find the law of non-contradiction violated in a fairy tale.  You can't.  Try to find a fairy tale where modus ponens (if P then Q, P therefore Q) is not functioning.  You can't.

So fairy tales operate with reason, but fairy tales stop short of trying to ascribe laws where they don't properly fit.

Again, Chesterton writes,

"I observed that learned men in spectacles were talking of the actual things that happened – dawn and death and so on – as if they were rational and inevitable.  They talked as if the fact that trees bear fruit were just as necessary as the fact that two and one trees make three.  But it is not.  There is an enormous difference by the test of fairyland; which is the test of imagination.  You cannot imagine two and one not making three.  But you can easily imagine trees not growing fruit; you can imagine them growing golden candlesticks or tigers hanging on by the tail."

You see, the men in spectacles [ scientific materialists] define things as necessary that are not necessary at all.  All the scientific materialist can do is observe facts.   And in their observing, they come across many interesting repetitions in nature.  But that is truly as far as it goes.  Observing a tree bearing fruit does not uncover any necessary truth about trees.  It does not explain where fruit comes from … or why fruit apparently grows from fruit trees instead of tigers growing from fruit trees.

The learned men with spectacles overreach.  They claim to know more than they know.  They speak of facts as if they were inviolable truths and complete explanations.  This, of course, is false.

Take gravity, for instance.  Ask the materialist where gravity comes from.  He doesn't know.  Ask why our universe has gravity.  He doesn't know.  Ask if gravity will be here tomorrow.  He doesn't know.  Ask him if will work the same tomorrow as it does today.  He doesn't know.  He thinks so, but he is guessing.  Ask him how gravity works.  He does better with that question.  He describes it in intricate detail and makes predictions about how it will operate given certain conditions.  But for the really interesting stuff, like why, he must shrug his shoulders.

Scientific knowledge is quite limited actually.  The problem is, however, our culture considers science the basis of facts and everything else mere opinion.

Fairy tales, Chesterton claims, are superior.  They are more honest in a way.  In fairyland, gravity works because of magic.  But it doesn't have to.  We can imagine a world where gravity does not work.  Things float.  True laws … like the law of non-contradiction … cannot be imagined away.  That is Chesterton's test of imagination.

Like in fairy tales, the world if full of shocking things … not just shocking things, but things that shock us in a pleasant way.  "Existence was a surprise," says Chesterton, "but it was a pleasant surprise."

And there is another quality of fairy tales that seems to make sense.  Chesterton calls it the "doctrine of conditional joy."  The most wonderful things in the world await the characters in the story if they only avoid one condition.  Virtues always hang on an if.

"You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire if you do not say the word 'cow'; or 'You may live happily with the King's daughter, if you do not show her an onion.'

The vision, Chesterton writes, "always hangs on a veto."  The "wild and whirling things" seem to hang on one thing that is forbidden.  Virtue is following the rule.  Joy awaits those who do.

Some might think that elfin ethics is unfair.  Why must one follow an arbitrary rule in order to experience inexpressible joy?

Here is the catch.  No one ever asks the fairy godmother, how come?  And how could they?  How can someone tell the fairy godmother that she is being unfair when they cannot understand fairyland itself?

To be in a position to complain about the rightness or wrongness of the ethics of the world in which we find ourselves, we need to be in a position of knowing the entirety of our existence first.  Otherwise, we are shaking our fist in ignorance.

It would be like a two year old getting ticked off at mommy for not letting him play in the street.  The temper tantrum of the two year old strikes us as completely absurd – and rightly so.  Those who shake their fist at the fairy godmother for being unfair for turning them into a pumpkin if they are one minute late also appear foolish.  After all, the fairy godmother may ask them to explain how she turns them into pumpkins or how they got into fairy land in the first place.

Those who shake their fist and throw a tantrum at God are like the two year old.  Remember the book of Job?  Job questions God's fairness, only to have God ask him 64 questions in a row.  "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"  Job is undone.

The world is full of mystery.  It is full of magic.  Things, even scientific things, work well and continue to work well every day ... for no apparent reason at all.  It is just the way it is.  And the mystery of this world ought to fill us with wide-eyed wonder.  We need that wonder to find meaning in life.

Like Chesterton, we all deep down sense that we are in a story, that life is not pointless, and that this world simply cannot explain itself.  And if this world really is driven by wonder and magic, like it appears to be, then perhaps there is a magician, thought Chesterton ... perhaps, this magician had a purpose.