Chesterton and the Elves

G. K. Chesterton raises this question in Orthodoxy. (There is even a chapter entitled “The Ethics of Elfland”!) This tells you everything you need to know about what a curious book Orthodoxy is.

At one level, the book looks like it is an attempt to prove the truth of Christianity. Chesterton certainly spends a lot of time explaining why he thinks Christianity is true. But when you look closely at what he is actually arguing, he is not doing anything at all to convince you, the Reader, that his beliefs are right.

Instead, he is doing something more radical. He is trying to convince you, the Reader, that his views are not necessarily wrong, that there is nothing about the Christian faith that is unreasonable or inconsistent with either the external world or its own internal logic. He also has a merry time showing the internal and external failings of alternatives to Christianity.

The set of people who come in for the greatest mockery are those who insist that they are being rational and reasonable and that they will only accept things which have been proven to be true by reason. These people reject Christianity because it is not reasonable, or because there is no proof of the existence of God, or because accepting anything at all on faith is inherently silly.

Enter the elves. Why do you reject the existence of elves? I read this book with a reading group and asked that question, which has resulted in even more conversations since then as other students have heard about this odd professor who seems perfectly willing to posit the existence of elves. I have thus heard an array of answers to the Elf Question.

First and foremost is the retort, “There is absolutely no reason to think elves are real.” Ah, but there is. We have a massive number of historical records reporting the existence of elves. People throughout time and around the world have reported the existence of elves. Indeed, it is unquestionably true that more people in this world have said they have seen elves than have said they have seen Socrates or Julius Caesar. Moreover, the people who say they saw Socrates or Julius Caesar were all located in a single location at a single period of time. People who have seen elves have come from all over the world throughout time. Is it more believable that a small number of people in the same location at the same time could be mistaken or that people from all over the world and at every time have been mistaken? So, why do you believe the first set of people, but not the second?

In other words, if your proof of existence is reports of eyewitnesses, we have an incredible amount of evidence that elves exist.

“Ah, but if there are elves, wouldn’t there be some tangible evidence of their existence? Elf bodies or elf bones or abandoned elf buildings?” That question has made a fundamental mistake about the nature of elves. Elves are magic. Their corpses and structures vanish upon the demise of the elf. So, of course there is no physical evidence; there can’t be physical evidence.

“Ah, but there is no such things as magic.” Really? How do you know that? Are there no unexplained phenomenon in the world? ‘Well sure, there are things we have not explained yet. But they are explainable using perfectly normal physical laws.” And do you know all those physical laws? Why isn’t it possible that one of the physical laws is that elf bodies disappear, they turn into pure energy, when the elf dies? Do you even have the ability to test that theory? So, why do you reject it?

Anyway, you get the point. It is a very merry conversation. The conclusion? Chesterton describes it perfectly when discussing whether miracles can occur.

But my belief that miracles have happened in human history is not a mystical belief at all; I believe in them upon human evidences as I do in the discovery of America. Upon this point there is a simple logical fact that only requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is to believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an old apple-woman when she bears testimony to a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust the peasant’s word about the ghost exactly as far as you trust the peasant’s word about the landlord. Being a peasant he will probably have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about both. Still you could fill the British Museum with evidence uttered by the peasant, and given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to human testimony there is a choking cataract of human testimony in favour of the supernatural. If you reject it, you can only mean one of two things. You reject the peasant’s story about the ghost either because the man is a peasant or because the story is a ghost story. That is, you either deny the main principle of democracy, or you affirm the main principle of materialism— the abstract impossibility of miracle. You have a perfect right to do so; but in that case you are the dogmatist. It is we Christians who accept all actual evidence—it is you rationalists who refuse actual evidence being constrained to do so by your creed. But I am not constrained by any creed in the matter, and looking impartially into certain miracles of mediaeval and modern times, I have come to the conclusion that they occurred. All argument against these plain facts is always argument in a circle. If I say, “Mediaeval documents attest certain miracles as much as they attest certain battles,” they answer, “But mediaevals were superstitious”; if I want to know in what they were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is that they believed in the miracles. If I say “a peasant saw a ghost,” I am told, “But peasants are so credulous.” If I ask, “Why credulous?” the only answer is—that they see ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid sailors have seen it; and the sailors are only stupid because they say they have seen Iceland.

Why does this matter? It points to a conclusion which is so obvious that it is stunning that it is so widely rejected. Every philosophical or theological system, every world view, ultimately rests on faith. The Christian has faith that Jesus Christ is God and died on a cross to provide redemption for the world. The believer in elves has faith that there are magical creatures in the woods. The believer in materialism has faith that nothing immaterial exists. The believer in Reason has faith that Reason reveals true things about the world, that it is a trustworthy tool to uncovering Truth.

I have faith in the first and last of the propositions in the previous paragraph. Others have faith in the third. Still others have faith in the second. But in the end, we all have faith. There is no proof that any of these things in which we have faith are true or false. You can no more prove the existence of elves than you can prove that we exist in a real world and not a dream state or that Americans really did land on the moon. You have faith that there are no elves, that the world is real, and that the moon-landing actually happened. I share your faith. But, good luck trying to prove any of these things to someone who believes differently. Good luck trying to prove to a believer in elves that they don’t exist, to a believer that we are brains in a vat that the world is real, or to a conspiracy theorist that the moon-landing was not an elaborate hoax. You will fail to prove it to the thoughtful person with faith. And similarly, they will fail to prove the opposite conclusions to you.

Faith, in other words, is the starting place for our views on the world. This is true for everyone whether they believe it or not.

So, what is conversation between people with different faith systems? Well, it would look a lot like Orthodoxy, a rather fun book where you get to think along with Chesterton about what it would be like to have a belief system like Chesterton’s. You learn something reading a book like this whether you agree with Chesterton or not. Indeed, a book like this is a perfect example of what a good conversation is like. You not only learn things, but you get to think about why you believe the things you believe.  Indeed, there is no better way to figure out what you actually believe than to read books with which you disagree and constantly ask, “Why do I think this argument is wrong?”

Maybe after reading enough about elves, you will decide your faith in their nonexistence was wrong. At a minimum, reading Chesterton will give you a good excuse to talk with other people about elves. What could be more fun that talking about whether elves are real? Well, how about figuring out if Santa is real?