The Ball and the Cross - Chapter 1
A Discussion Somewhat up in the Air
Plot Summary
The novel opens with two characters, Professor Lucifer and the monk Fr. Michael on a flying ship designed by the professor. The professor is a scientist and inventor, and has created all the things on the ship with the notable exception of himself and Michael. He truly believes, however, that he can improve on Nature. He sees Nature, reduced to its physical properties alone as hopeless and devoid of meaning. Lucifer derides Michael for his naiveté and medieval mindset, ridiculing his reliance on deductive reasoning.
Michael, on the other hand, is full of joy and simplicity.
As Lucifer derides Michael for his lack of complex thinking, Michael compliments him for his rhetorical skill, but points out that he is about to crash into St. Paul’s Cathedral. They narrowly avoid a collision. The professor continues on pointing out how his reasonable world view is far superior to the unreasonableness of the cross. When Fr. Michael points out that by rejecting the cross, one destroys the entire world, the professor is filled with rage and knocks the monk out of the flying ship.
Michael survives the fall by clinging to the arm of the cross atop the Cathedral. He has a mystical experience wherein he experiences complete abandonment to the will of God despite his difficult circumstances. He then falls off the cross and into the dome of the church. He is apprehended by a police officer who is initially confrontational, but quickly surmises that Fr. Michael is insane and treats him much more gently.
As they are leaving the cathedral, they hear the crashing of glass as a window is broken by Evan MacIan, the Scottish Highlander horrified by the blasphemy against the Blessed Mother he saw in the window. Fr. Michael sees the futility of quarreling and has a vision of a child-like world where men embrace one another. The police officer then asks for a constable, and the good monk is lead away to the insane asylum.
Vocabulary
patent - easily recognizable; obvious
impecunious - having little or no money
Altiora peto- literally, I seek the higher things.
This may be a reference to the 1883 book by Laurence Oliphant of the same title. Laurence Oliphant (1829-1888) was a Victorian author and member of parliament who left England to join an American cult. He was both a Zionist and an occultist. Chesterton certainly was aware of him - in fact he wrote a Clerihew about him.
When they christened Laurence Oliphant He observed, “What a jolly font.” This irreverent remark Was overheard by the Clerk
Selected Passages and Discussion Questions
“You know that since our science has spoken, the bottom has fallen out of the Universe. Now, heaven is the hopeless thing, more hopeless than any hell.”
See the essay, the Roots of the World. Chesterton sees an interconnection among everything in the universe. In particular, he sees that a reductive view of humanity, as proposed by materialists, especially Darwinists, allows us to think of us as no more than beasts, which leads to all sorts of unintended consequences. Do you agree with him? Do you see the consequences of this worldview in our society today? What can be done to contradict this spirit?
“Man is a contradiction in terms; he is a beast whose superiority to other beasts consists in having fallen.”
How does the fallen nature of man point to the superiority of man to beasts?
“You begin by breaking up the Cross; but you end by breaking up the habitable world.”
How did Chesterton see rejection of suffering as destroying the very foundation of the world? In his worldview, what does it mean to embrace the cross?
“But those who see and feel the fundamental fact of the matter know that paradox is a thing that belongs not to religion only, but to all vivid and violent practical crises of human living.”
Is paradox a normal or typical part of life? Do you agree that paradox is not for religion only?
“At the highest crisis of some incurable anguish there will suddenly fall upon the man the stillness of an insane contentment. It is not hope, for hope is broken and romantic and concerned with the future; this is complete and of the present. It is not faith, for faith by its very nature is fierce and as it were at once doubtful and defiant; but this is simply a satisfaction. It is not knowledge, for the intellect seems to have no particular part in it. Nor is it (as the modern idiots would certainly say it is) a mere numbness or negative paralysis of the powers of grief. It is not negative in the least; it is as positive as good news. In some sense, indeed, it is good news. It seems almost as if there were some equality among things, some balance in all possible contingencies which we are not permitted to know lest we should have indifference to good and evil, but which is sometimes shown to us for an instant as a last aid in our last agony.”
Chesterton beautifully describes a state of abandonment to the will of God here.
Romans 8:28 says “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” This seems to be a paradox given the existence of evil in the world. How can we reconcile the existence of evil with the idea that everything works together for good?
“He felt the full warmth of that pleasure from which the proud shut themselves out; the pleasure which not only goes with humiliation, but which almost is humiliation. Men who have escaped death by a hair have it, and men whose love is returned by a woman unexpectedly, and men whose sins are forgiven them.”
Chesterton appears to be describing gratitude here. Do you agree? Does one have to be humble to be truly grateful?
“Here they were still at their old bewildering, pardonable, useless quarrels, with so much to be said on both sides, and so little that needs to be said at all.”
How many of your disagreements are bewildering quarrels? How do you think Chesterton would have us disagree without wasting our time?