I’m a champion of progress. Or rather I’ve always desperately tried to be one. Post hoc, ergo meliora hoc, if you’ll forgive a feeble Latin pun, are words I wish I could live by.
Ever since Darwin created the world, everything in it, including man, has been undergoing nothing but meliorative changes – that’s what I’ve always wanted to become my article of faith.
Everything mankind has ever done has pushed us forward with nary a backward step. The pace of progress has varied, but the overall tendency is inexorable.
Hence I’ve strenuously tried to convince myself that today’s professor of philosophy at, say, the LSE is a step forward from Plato; Tracy Emin has to be a better artist than Giotto; Andrew Motion is a positive development of Shakespeare; John Lennon represents progress compared to Bach, and Damian Hirst compared to Donatello.
Admittedly, I’ve had to override my mind and taste to feel that way, but I’ve been willing to do just that. One has to march in step with one’s time. Doesn’t one?
And then earlier this week I spent a couple of days in Chartres.
Suddenly, my hitherto unshakeable desire to believe in progress began to totter with an ever-increasing amplitude. Nothing short of a frontal lobotomy would make me accept that Chartres Cathedral – and especially what it represents – is backward compared to a modern skyscraper – and especially what it represents.
I’m not in favour of awarding ranking points, but, if pressed, I’d say the cathedral is the most beautiful thing created by man – perhaps because it wasn’t just created by man.
No other Gothic cathedral I’ve seen has such an intricate lattice of flying buttresses at several tiers, each providing niches for sculptures (which is also quite rare). This added reinforcement enabled the builders to increase both the number and size of the windows, and the extra acreage didn’t go to waste.
Nowhere can one see such a blazing glory of stained glass as in Chartres, not even in Bourges, where it’s as superb but less plentiful. Each window is bursting with colour, with life eternal – each tells the story of a great civilisation exhaling the air breathed into it by the pre-Darwinian Creator.
My father, a glass chemist, doubted we’d be able to reproduce today the technical mastery involved in colouring pieces of glass so luridly that they irradiate sparkle even with no sun shining through them. I don’t know about that. What’s certain is that, even if the technical know-how is extant, the inspiration isn’t.
Then there’s the mysterious labyrinth cut into the floor stones of the nave. It symbolises the tortuous road leading to Christ, and for the past 800 years pilgrims have walked it slowly and reverentially, their heads bowed, their minds and souls engrossed in mystical contemplation. They still do, unfashionably trying to recapture the part of life Darwin didn’t quite get around to explaining.
The cathedral took some 30 years to build, and God only knows how much effort. Every sinew had to be strained to erect such a massive structure without any modern construction equipment, with only human hands and the superhuman spirit that gave them strength.
Time wasn’t of the essence, as it always is with us. It was eternity speaking through stone and glass, and eternity has to take man outside time. It also takes man outside space for, like many Romanesque and Gothic buildings, Chartres Cathedral defies physics by appearing bigger inside than outside. That’s no coincidence: physics apart, spiritually it was built from the inside out. Its space isn’t just three-dimensional.
What does the cathedral say about its time? Just about everything, I dare say, in the same sense in which the Shard or Centre Pompidou says everything about our time. An age defined by filial devotion is manifestly capable of soaring to greater heights than an age circumscribed by hubris and self-indulgence.
I hadn’t seen Chartres Cathedral for some 15 years, and in the intervening period its interior had changed. Centuries enveloped in candle smoke had darkened the walls and columns so much that, the last time I was there, I didn’t even notice them.
It was as if they were there only to provide an invisible frame for the dazzling brilliance of the stained glass. One’s eye was instantly riveted to it, sliding over the rest.
In the past few years the interior has been painted pink and white, supposedly to restore the original look. There have been fierce debates about the project, and they’re still raging. For once I’m not going to join in.
The instant effect of the glass has doubtless been diminished – it now floors one with an accelerating series of visual punches, rather than with one mighty blow. But on the other hand, I could now divert some of the attention to the interior itself. The two do compete, but in the end neither loses – and neither does this awe-struck visitor.
Progress tried to make inroads on this glory in the fateful eighteenth century. The spirit that had inspired the cathedral had begun to attenuate, with the attendant hubris increasing pari passu. Hence some bright spark saw fit to plonk an awful 4-tonne sculptural concoction at the altar, which looks like the Baroque equivalent of a moustache painted on the Mona Lisa.
Other bright sparks later in the century were out to vandalise, or ideally destroy, the cathedral, as they had destroyed so many others. But the cathedral was spared excessive damage by being declared a Temple of Reason, one of several, and used for atheistic homilies to Philosophy and Progress.
The sort of progress we see all around us now, one disfiguring our cities and, more important, our souls. Here I must confess to a little fib: I’m really not, nor have ever tried to be, a champion of progress.
We’ve surrounded ourselves with all sorts of sophisticated trinkets, each supposed to make our lives better. And fair enough, my car took me from London to Chartres in a few hours – only for me to realise yet again that in everything that matters we’ve been travelling backwards, leapfrogging our sublime civilisation to land in the midst of pagan barbarism.
It takes an inert mind and deadened senses to discern any forward momentum in the development of man, except the kind that propels him towards perdition. And if you don’t believe me, go to Chartres.
“the LSE is a step forward from Plato; Tracy Emin has to be a better artist than Giotto; Andrew Motion is a positive development of Shakespeare; John Lennon represents progress compared to Bach, and Damian Hirst compared to Donatello.”
NO way and never will be!
Jane Goodall the chimp lady said that twice she had intense spiritual experiences.
Once while attending a conference at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris she said she was overwhelmed by the architecture, the lighted stained glass and the choir singing. She said to herself that this could not have been the result of random selection.
Thanks for this. I have always wanted to go to Chartres but have never managed it. Your account of your experiences there has made me want to visit as soon as possible!
Very ironically, the idea of Progress is actually Christian in origin.
It did not appear in any religion, philosophy or worldview before Christianity. History was cyclical as with the Greeks ( Who believed they were in a downturn from a previous Golden Age, as did some other peoples), a random series of events as in many Eastern Cultures, or a mere procession of them as in Judaism.
Progressivism, as it has appeared in its many varieties, e.g. Marxism, is actually a bastardisation of the Christian doctrine of the coming Kingdom of God.
I doubt very much if Marx or the others were, or are, aware of the ultimate origin of their ‘Big Idea’, but there it is.
Of course, Progress without Christianity at the helm has steered very many onto the rocks and continues to do so.
Take heart though. The Harvard historian and sociologist Pitirim Sorokin argued that Civilisations rise and fall according to their orientation to the spiritual.
Our own culture was in the final stages of a focus on materialism, driven by internal dynamics, he said. But this would inevitably reverse.
Let’s hope he was right. If you have not read it, his book, ‘The Crisis of our Age’, which is a summary of his work, is well worth getting hold of.
Gilding the lily:
https://youtu.be/kcYCMotFiJY
Son et lumiere to raise funds for the renovation, supposedly?
Trying to explain aesthetic and spiritual experiences in terms of natural selection or any other mechanism is futile – as is trying to explain why people laugh or don’t laugh at jokes. The cosmos can be explained by unabashed physicists but be prepared to see the explanations changed frequently. As for biologists, I wonder if Ms Goodall really did refer to random selection. If she did, the she was right because random selection will get you nowhere, which is what happens most of the time. We know that change can occur (and quite rapidly) with consistently biased artificial selection. It has also been observed in Nature as with the waxing and waning of ‘industrial melanism’ in moths in the Liverpool area. Changes on such a trivial scale could well accumulate under sustained selection and lead to greater things but do not expect it to happen ‘before your very eyes’ as Arthur Askey (another Liverpudlian) would have said. In short: Chartres 1, Liverpool 0 even after extra time.
Bert E (4:56pm)
Did you read the essay through to its conclusion?
Get with the times man; why do we need the lofty spires, illuminous stain-glass and flying buttresses when we can have remodelled movie theatres for churches with coloured lights and flying pastors.
I have clicked away on your various postings here on you blog after reading your “ Neocon Trick” book. That text so challenged and enlightened my thoughts on politics that I wondered what you might have had to say about the contemporary Christian Church. How can we lament its loss when we have relevant tattooed pastors speaking to the current flock? The pearl of great price is now worn in the ear by the gay reverend; isn’t that reaching out?
So, I ordered from abroad and (thanks again for the insomnia) just completed “How the West was Lost”. I thought you might have addressed who the current great theologians are, what Albert Pike was scheming, and how Hillsong chords have replaced the historic chants, while the solitude, awe and incense has now a controlled atmosphere generated by the I.T. crew up the back. The church has had a reverse metamorphosis; a beautiful butterfly back to a grub! However, your book opened like one of those pop-out books. Dimensions reached out into international politics, corporate organisations, the Arts and other areas of human behaviour. It’s truly a great read and should be essential reading for history students.
A few decades back I was struggling at University to give a Christian perspective to counter Existentialism and various Postmodern writers such as Derrida, Foucault and Baudrillard. I was introduced to Francis Schaeffer who appeared as one of the rare Christians who was addressing such chaotic thinking while writing about faith and culture; I assumed you may have of mentioned him?
Your analysis of the dismantling of historical Christianity is more thorough and inciteful then anything I’ve come across, (not to mention your cutting humour). So, I suppose the reason that your books are not loudly discussed and posted about in Christian bookshops is either because the contemporary church is so secularised that they won’t applaud a slap on the face, or more likely that they don’t realise that they are a compromised community.
Thank you very much for your kind comments. Actually my books are aimed at the general audience, although they are at times sold in Christian bookshops. I suppose my tendency of not pulling any punches when attacking the Zeitgeist makes both clerical and secular readers uncomfortable. One is allowed to ctiticise various symptoms of the malaise but not its very essence. As to what I think of today’s churches, just tap in key words like ‘bishop’, ‘archbishop’ and ‘pope’ on my blog and you’ll get a full complement.
Just had an overview (only at the first 50 or so; and a chuckle at the titles)…there is another book there.
It would seem that the ‘bonkers’ Peter Hitchens shares the same taste in our Christian culture
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/02/what-will-survive-of-us-the-miracle-of-chartres-cathedral-.html
Sadly due to late running I’ve now missed Chartres on three visits to the Loire Valley, hopefully fourth time lucky.
Even those who are bonkers (or even evil) may be right on some things, as Hitchens is. Lenin, Stalin and Beria, for example, shared by taste in music. Why, I even like Hitler’s watercolours.
I mean ‘my’, not ‘by’.