Chesterton's Lecture at St. Peter Parish a Success

Last night Mr. G. K. Chesterton presented a lecture on Darwin. The lecture was presented at Chillicothe's St. Peter Parish Hall. About 35 people were in attendance. Mr. Chesterton noted that this was his third visit to America. He further noted that had Prohibition not been repealed he would not have returned to the United States. Mr. Chesterton is not a teetotaler. Although he has quipped that "We should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them." While I can't recall that he specifically mentioned it, some of Mr. Chesterton's views on teetotalism may be found in his 1914 book, The Flying Inn. Mr. Chesterton gave the audience an insight to his early childhood, speaking fondly of his father, mother and siblings. He especially recalled his father's building him a toy theater and tellling amazing fairy tales.

While I can't recall all of Mr. Chesterton's statements made during the course of his lecture, here are a few of those that strike me as most memorable:

"Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before."

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around."

"I would give a woman not more rights, but more privileges. Instead of sending her to seek such freedom as notoriously prevails in banks and factories, I would design specially a house in which she can be free."

"A modern vegetarian is also a teetotaler, yet there is no obvious connection between consuming vegetables and not consuming fermented vegetables. A drunkard, when lifted laboriously out of the gutter, might well be heard huskily to plead that he had fallen there through excessive devotion to a vegetable diet."

"Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die."

"Never let a quarrel get in the way of a good argument."

As you can see from the quotations, Mr. Chesterton departed from his prepared Darwinian Lecture notes quite frequently. At one point in the lecture he actually reclined on a sofa and spoke about drawing on the ceiling.

At the conclusion of his lecture, Mr. Chesterton answered question from the audience. All in all, a wonderful evening!

Above: Mr. Chesterton chats with members of the audience after his lecture.