G.K. Chesterton: People are not animals

[East_and_West]

Look, we may share common ancestors with animals. We may have evolved from animals, but my friends, we are not animals. We are far beyond that. Consider what G.K. Chesterton states concerning this issue:

“It is not natural to see man as a natural product. It is not common sense to call man a common object of the country or the seashore. It is not seeing straight to see him as an animal. It is not sane. It sins against the ligtht, against the broad daylight of proportion which is the principle of all reality. It is reached by stretching a point, by making out a case, by artificiality selecting a certain light and shade, by bringing into prominence the lessor of lower things which may happen to be similar. The solid standing in the sunlight, the thing we can walk round and see from all sides, is quite different. It is also an extraordinary thing; and the more sides we see of it the more extraordinary it seems. It is emphatically not a thing that follows or flows naturally from anything else. It we imagine that an inhuman or impersonal intelligence could have felt from the first the general nature of the non-human world sufficiently to see that things would evolve in whatever way the did evolve, there would have been nothing whatever in all the world to prepare such a mind for such an unnatural novelty. To such a mind, man would most certainly have seemed something like one herd out of a hundred herds finding richer pasture; or one swallow out of a hundred swallows making summer under a strange sky. It would not be in the same scale and scarcelly in the same dimension. We might as truly say that it would not be in the same universe. It would be more like seeing one cow out of a hundred cows suddenly jump over the moon or one pig out of a hundred pigs grow wings in a flash and fly.”

Chesterton, in his most poetic language, does not deny that man has some similarities to animals. This makes sense, in light of the fact that man is akin to them and that we evolved from them. However, everything on this earth has similarities in one one way or another to anything else. We can sit around all day trying to find similarities between dirt and water, yet we do not conclude that they are the same thing. We can comment on the fact that black and white are both colors that we an see. But they are not the same. In fact, they are exact opposites. We can discuss the fact that man and animals both have similar organs and bone structures, etc. But upon true and honest analysis, man and animal are so utterly different that man is a sort of absurdity upon this earth. As absurd as a pig growing wings and flying. Chesterton notes some of those differences: “The simplest truth about man is that he is a very strange being ; almost in the sense of being a stranger on earth. In all sobriety, he has much more of the external appearances of one bringing alien habits from another land than of a mere growth of this one. He has an unfair advantage and an unfair disadvantage. He cannot seep in his own skin; he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once a creator moving miraculous hands and fingers and a kind of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; his is propped on artificial crutches called frunitrue. His mind has the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations. Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had caught sight of some secret in the very shape of the universe hidden fro the universe itself. Alone among the animals he feels the need of averting his thoughts form the root realities of his own bodily being; of hiding them as in the presence of some higher possibility which creates the mystery of shame. Whether we praise these things as natural to man or abuse them as artificial in nature, they remain in the same sense unique. This is realised by the whole popular instinct called religion, until disturbed by pendants, especially laborious pendants of the Simple Life.”
continued…

 

[East_and_West]

Continued from above

You see man is so different from animals that if man is even looked upon as an animal, one must conclude that this animal has gone mad. For this animal alone feels shame; this animal alone creates for the sake of creation; this animal alone requires the ritual of religion; can feel shame. Man alone can create art and we do not find gradation of such art among animals. As Chesterton states, " For in the plain matter like the pictures there is in fact not a trace of any such development or degree. Monkeys did not begin pictures an d men finish them; Pithecanthropus did not draw a reindeer badly and Homo Sapiens draw it well. Th higher animals did not draw better and better portraits; the dog did not paint better in his best period than in his early bad manner as a jackal; the wild horse was not an Impressionist and the race-horse a Post-Impressionist." The point being this: man is wholly other when compared to animals. Man alone posses the unnatural ability to create and man alone has the unnatural ability to reason. It is the duel gift of creation and rationality that places us into another category altogether. And thus, man is not animal. Man is above the animal. So drop the “we are animals too” argument because it does not hold water.

Now for the “animals are people too argument”. This is absolutely and utterly ridiculous. When animals produce the Mona Lisa, or Bach’s B minor mass, I will buy it. When animals produce the philosophy of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas I will believe it. When they build beautiful temples to their animal gods, and develop the most tantalizing and adventurous myths, akin to Roman, Greek, and Norse Mythology, I will say that animals are people. When animals use rings as symbols of an undying love, I will change my mind. But until animals reach such a sublime status, then stop calling that which is not a person a person. To call animals people is succumb to the childish fantasies of Walt Disney cartoons. I am sorry my friends, but we do not live in the world of Bambi or Snow White.