Week 4: Chapter IV — The Ethics of Elfland

1.Chesterton begins by noting that as a boy he was told he would grow up and lose his ideals, replacing them with faith in practical politics. He says the opposite happened: his ideals remained, but his faith in practical politicians evaporated. Has something like this happened to you? What ideals have you kept, and what have you grown more skeptical about?

2.He argues that tradition is simply "democracy extended through time" — giving votes to the dead — and that it is therefore the truly democratic attitude to take seriously the accumulated opinions of all past generations. Do you find this argument compelling? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

3.The heart of the chapter is Chesterton's distinction between logical necessity (2+1=3, which cannot be otherwise) and the laws of nature (apples fall, which might in principle be otherwise). He says the witch in the fairy tale is more philosophically honest than the scientist, because she does not pretend that blowing a horn necessarily causes a castle to fall — she simply knows it does.