Words Worth Noting - January 3, 2023

“I believe I am responsible precisely as I believe I am awake. If I choose to say that I was at this moment in a dream, and it did not matter what I did, nobody could possibly offer any final proof that I was not in a dream. This is plain, for the simple reason that no one could offer any proof that might not be offered in a dream. But if I ate all the family’s breakfast, and then told them they were a dream family, you would say simply that I was mad. That is all that real philosophy has to say about a determinist – he is mad. ‘Mad’ does not mean stupid or illogical, or without arguments; madmen always have excellent arguments. ‘Mad’ means fixed in a mental position which cannot be reconciled with actual human life. Any belief is insane, which makes most of a man's human words and acts unmeaning…”

G.K. Chesterton in The London Opinion June 9, 1906, reprinted in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 25 #5 (May/June 2022)