The Spice of Life

It's been a long time since I read a book that was simultaneously very thought-provoking, and extremely easy to read through. At any given time, I'm generally burning through a bunch of fictional books, (recently, several Alexander McCall Smith books, Middlemarch, and Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town), and slowly leafing through others in bursts of a hundred pages every two weeks or so (War and Peace, Brideshead Revisited). Last week, this series of essays by Chesterton entitled The Spice of Life seemed fated to end up in the latter category. However, about ten pages in, and I knew I would be finishing it off in the next two days.

Like G.K. Chesterton's only other novel that I have read (The Man Who Was Thursday), this contains a mix of light-hearted philosophy mixed with spiritualism, a smattering of thoughts that run very deep, but seem on the surface not to take themselves too seriously. He writes about a series of topics, including writing different kinds of literature ("How to Write a Detective Story"), classic English literature that is all too familiar to those of us who were educated in India in the 90s ("Disputes on Dickens", "The Macbeths"), philosophical observations on real life ("The Peasant"), and suchlike. Some of the ones on Christianity give the impression of Chesterton struggling to find evidence of his faith in random aspects of life. But apart from these, the essays are fairly light and most importantly, pleasurable reading.

 Some choice quotes from the collection. Anyone who likes these will probably enjoy the essays.

"Let it be understood that I write this article as one wholly conscious that he has failed to write a detective story. But I have failed a good many times. My authority is therefore practical and scientific, like that of some great statesman or social thinker dealing with Unemployment or the Housing Problem."  (How to Write A Detective Story)

"Now secular education really means that everybody shall make a point of looking down at the pavement, lest by some fatal chance somebody should look up at the lamp. The lamp of faith that did in fact illuminate the street for the mass of mankind in most ages of history, was not only a wandering fire seen floating in the air by visionaries; it was also for most people the explanation of the post. If a low cloud like a London fog must indeed cover that flame, then it is an objective fact that the object will remain chiefly as an object to be bumped into. I am not blaming anybody who can only manage to regard the world in that highly objective light. Even if the lamp-post appears as a post without a lamp, and therefore a post without a purpose, it may be possible to take different views of it. The stoic, like the tramp, may lean on it; the optimist, like the drunkard, may embrace it; the progressive may attempt to climb it, and so on. So it is with those who merely bump into a headless world as into a lampless post; to whom the world is a large objective obstacle. I only say that there is a difference, and not a small or secondary difference, between those who know and those who do not know what the post is for." - (The Religious Aim of Education)

"In this connection I think the educational arrangement about holidays has long been a ludicrous mistake. Holiday tasks are a mistake. Home-work is a mistake. Give the boy or girl less holidays if you think they need less. But be sufficiently businesslike to get the best out of the boy or girl for whatever concession you make to them. If you can excuse anyone from work, you can excuse him from worry. Leisure is a food, like sleep; liberty is a food, like sleep. Leisure is a matter of quality rather than quantity. Five minutes lasts longer when one cannot be disturbed than five hours when one may be disturbed. Restrict the liberty in point of time; restrict it in point of space; but do not restrict it in point of quality. If you give somebody only three seconds' holiday - then, by all the remains of your ruined sense of honour, leave him alone for three seconds" - (On Holidays)