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'Never Enough of Nothing to Do': On the Autobiography of G.K. Chesterton
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17072 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1990 |
6,156 Words |
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James V. Schall, S.J.
James V. Schall, S.J., is associate professor of government at
Georgetown University. His most recent work is entitled the
Politics of Heaven and Hell. |
Cicero, the great Roman philosopher and orator, who, through his articulateness and good sense, is responsible for much of the form and content of civilization itself, began to letter to his son, Marcus, then studying in Athens, with his famous passage: "Publius Cornelius Scipio, the first of that family to called Africanus, used to remark that he was never less idle than when he had nothing to do, and never less lonely than when he was by himself." Indeed, it might be argued that the very possibility of civilization begins in this solitude, in what we do when, to put it paradoxically as Chesterton himself would, we have precisely nothing to do. The great question of civilization remains "What do you do when all else is done?" or to put it in another way, "What are the higher things for which we are each of us in our very being constituted?'
Chesterton begins the tenth chapter of his Autobiography, which he titled "Friendship and Foolery," by noting that some people complain about a man "for doing nothing." He continues, "There are some, still more mysterious and amazing, who complain of having nothing to do." Those who do nothing and those who have nothing to do are perhaps not at all the same people. Anyone familiar with the classical tradition from which Chesterton came will immediately recognize that when we do precisely "nothing," we are concerned about those things beyond use and pleasure that are "for their own sakes," as the Greeks put it. At the same time, those who have "nothing to do" may well be busying themselves doing those presumably necessary things that in fact ought to be done but that do not reach to the heart of what we really want to do and be. Hence, such people are dissatisfied because they have nothing serious to do in their lives.
In words that do much to explain the way he looked at his life and how he chose to reflect and write about it, Chesterton continues in this passage:
When given the gift of loneliness, which is the gift of liberty, [such men who do not appreciate the freedom of having nothing to do] will cast it away; they will destroy it deliberately with some dreadful game with cards or a little ball. [Chesterton never liked golf.] I speak only for myself; I know it takes all sorts to make a world; but I cannot repress a shudder when I see them throwing away their hard-won holidays by doing something. For my own part, I never can get enough Nothing to do.
What are the purpose and content of this ironic but indispensable "nothing"? In a revealing phrase, Chesterton remarks that he has
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