Chesterton vs. Hobbes

Yes. I've been re-reading the "Orthodoxy" and I've been wading through "Leviathan" and I've come to a few conclusions. Firstly, Hobbes is insane. Not because his sentences are so confusing, but because he is essentially on the path to insanity. Er....was. Anyway, here's my point. Hobbes doesn't allow anything he can't explain to be in his worldview. Essentially he says that the term "Incorporeal Substance" is irrational and absurd because the term is a contradiction in itself. This leads to him denying that God is a spirit. And this leads to some borderline atheistic conclusions. For example, if God is not a spirit, then he must be matter, and if he is matter than he is limited. If he is limited, then he is not who he says he is...etc. etc. He wisely avoids bringing his assumption to it's final conclusion, but he is, as Chesterton says, "Within a hairs-breadth of insanity". Here's Chesterton:

"Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite....To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits."

And Later:
"The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say "if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health."

"The one created thing which we cannot look at is the one thing in the light of which we look at everything. Like the sun at noonday, mysticism explains everything else by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility."

I don't wish to write an entire reflection essay, so I'll make it short. Hobbes is insane because he tries to understand God. The infinite. He tries to stuff God into his theory of the universe and his head explodes because God is too big for him. By not allowing the mystery of the infinite God to remain an unknowable mystery (how can we, finite beings, know what is infinite) he ends up denying God's omnipotence. This line of reasoning will ultimately lead you to doubts about yourself. Any questions? Good. Go read Chesterton.

=] Have a mystic and poetic day!