Nonetheless it seemed to me that the perfections symbolized by the Poet, the Sailor, the Grizzlebeard are not the peculiarities of one man whose life has spanned almost two ages. They are perfections essential to the integral completion of Christian humanity. With this thesis in mind, I wrote this book: an attempt not only to introduce the contemporary reader to Belloc, but also an attempt to disengage, from the vast corpus of Bellociana, those themes that are of permanent value.
What follows is not a biography, nor is it a book of literary criticism. It is, if you like, a “metaphysics of the concrete” seen through the eyes of a man rooted in the things that are.
CONTENTS
| [ONE] | Page |
| No Alienated Man | 1 |
| [TWO] | |
| Grizzlebeard: History From Within | 49 |
| [THREE] | |
| Christendom: “Esto Perpetua” | 84 |
| [CONCLUSION] | |
| The Future Place of Hilaire Belloc in English Letters | 101 |
| [NOTES] | 105 |
| [List] of Editions Cited | 106 |
Chapter One
NO ALIENATED MAN
The Four Men: Natural Humanism
The ancient Arabs spoke of a creature having life in two worlds: his body was rooted in the earth, but his soul swept out across the horizons to a world beyond. Let us call him by his name: Man. This balance which is Man is a tension rarely maintained in the course of human existence.
Let us call the one who situates his destiny in this world, and who habituates his gaze to the things this side of the horizon, Aristotelian Man. Let us call the one who despises the limits of the horizons, and who contemplates the world beyond, Platonic Man.
This first alienation of man from himself was healed in the ancient world by the Incarnation. Aristotelian Man, like St. Thomas the Doubter, could put his fingers in the side of his Creator; and Platonic Man, like the mystic John, found the Word, but it was the Word made Flesh. Revelation restored to man the unity that was himself. Anima naturaliter Christiana. This unity was achieved as a reality both personal and corporate for a period of time in that small segment of the globe known as Western Europe.