All is fair in love and war . . . and religion ?

G K Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc are two of the early twentieth century writers I would like to have met - or at least, to have found myself quietly in their presence, for both would have been extremely formidable to converse with.

I much enjoy seventy per cent (say) of their writings: of the remainder, half seems to me to be (especially in the case of Belloc) weak and uninspired; and the other half (especially in the case of Chesterton) to be spoilt by blinkered dogmatisms and warped judgement.

I have just read an anthology of Chesterton's 'non-fictional prose' selected by W H Auden. The early sections of the book are mostly literary and personality criticism - essays on Chaucer, Browning, Dickens, Kipling and others. Here we are in a field where personal preferences are a fair element in the author's assessment: we are stimulated and amused by his insights and responses, even if some are a trifle outrageous. But when we reach the chapters that relate to philosophies and religion, Chesterton's prejudices become intellectually destructive. That is to say, they counter logic and reason and distort truth in order to fashion interpretations that suit his own religious agenda.

Of ethologists he will say, for instance, that 'the man of science does not realise that ceremonial is essentially a thing done without a reason'; yet in the next paragraph he suggests where we may look for a reason: 'the mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should be studied at a subscription ball'. 'Human behaviour is beyond all study', he implies, 'but you are studying it in the wrong place'. GKS, in attempting to convince us, constantly over-eggs his cake, writes irrationally, and then if we object, insists that truth is irrational anyway.

Like a clever boxer he imaginatively dodges around the ring shifting the target of his blows, and we can watch him hopping from foot to foot (not the genial, bodily GKS, of course, who was not built for hopping) and subtily changing his stance from moment to moment in order to ensure that no two consecutive blows come from the same direction. His opponent is easily bewildered, feeling that an attempt to parry one punch will merely open the way for another of a quite different kind.

Maybe that is clever boxing, but is dirty argument.

GKS's religious philosophy is at the back of all this. He presumably believes that all is fair in love, war and religion.

PS But I can't help liking GKC just the same.

All is fair in love and war . . . and religion ?