“Sympathy for Mr. [poet, playwright, militant atheist and in 1909 suicide John] Davidson’s sincerity and admiration of his talents cannot disguise the very obvious weakness which is behind all this kind of philosophy – anarchism, appeals to absolute liberty, renunciation of limitations as such, advice to the young to ‘consider no thou shalt not,’ talk of ‘setting aside tradition, custom, creed’ – all this is incurably futile and childish, because it will not face a fundamental logical fact. This fact is that there is no such thing as a condition of complete emancipation, unless we can speak of a condition of nonentity. What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another. If I have a piece of chalk in my hand I can make either a circle or a square; that is the sacred thing called liberty. But I cannot make a thing that is both a circle and a square. I cannot make an unlimited square. I cannot draw an emancipated circle. If I wish to make anything at all, I must abide by the limitations and principles of the thing I make. I must heed the ‘Thou shalt not’ of the circle. I must observe the ‘tradition, custom, creed’ of the square. And any man who makes anything whatever, if it be with a piece of chalk, is doing exactly what a man does when he marries or enlists in an army. He is courageously selling himself into a splendid slavery. And, of course, in moral matters it is the same; there is no lawlessness, there is only a free choice between limitations. If Mr. Davidson finds himself with four other men on one side of a river in flood, the other men may propose to build a boat or a bridge. Mr. Davidson may say, ‘We will not be limited by such set tasks; we will not drudge at rules and measurements.’ The others will say, ‘Very well, then, we must stop on this side. If you are not limited by the work you are limited by the river. You can not have complete freedom either way. If we build a boat, then we are not free to idle. If we don’t build a boat, then we are not free to get across.’ Mr. Davidson’s mere anarchism therefore (and everybody else’s) I take the liberty merely of dismissing. I dismiss it not because it is impracticable (which would be quite a small thing), but because it is unthinkable, because it is in the most literal sense of the word insignificant, signifying nothing.”
G.K. Chesterton “The Adoration of Matter”, a review of Davidson’s The Theatrocrat: A Tragic Play of Church and State, in Gilbert: The Magazine of the Society of G.K. Chesterton Vol. 28 #6 (July/August 2025)