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[personal profile] cimorene
As he now went up the weary and perpetual steps, he was daunted and bewildered by their almost infinite series. But it was not the hot horror of a dream or of anything that might be exaggeration or delusion. Their infinity was more like the empty infinity of arithmetic, something unthinkable, yet necessary to thought. Or it was like the stunning statements of astronomy about the distance of the fixed stars. He was ascending the house of reason, a thing more hideous than unreason itself.


—GK Chesterton, The Man Who was Thursday


I admire the lyricism and construction of this paragraph, and indeed of the whole book, although I do feel that GK Chesterton is oddly over-frightened by things like math and logic. On the other hand, a man whose primary sleuth is a priest and who made a late in life conversion to Catholicism is bound to have some singular ideas of some kind about religion and hence philosophy; I guess the ideas in play at this passage are edging closer to his personal Ideas.

It does remind me a bit of HP Lovecraft and so-called 'cosmic' terror, where the horror is like, "and some people are NOT EXACTLY LIKE ME" (and it even applies to class, it's not even just race that viscerally revolts him!), and it's like... yes, welcome to being a living human with a brain, gentlemen. I see you finally finished reading page 1?

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cimorene: cartoony drawing of a woman's head in profile giving dubious side-eye (Default)
Cimorene

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