Volume > Issue > Those Heartless Social Scientists

Those Heartless Social Scientists

HOMELESS VOYEURS?

By Thomas Martin | May 2001
Thomas Martin is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska at Kearney.

Chesterton thought a man could only understand himself — and Mankind — by going home, and that there are two ways for a man to go home: He might get home by staying home, or he could walk around the whole world until he came back to the same spot.

A home is different from a mere house; a home is the oldest of communities — it comes before straw, sticks, bricks, and politics. The home is best explained as a place of the heart — the place of our bearing and the place where we receive our bearings.

Chesterton’s advice to the man who would seek to understand Man by traveling about the world and observing other peoples is that it would do him well to be snowed in on his own street, where he would “step into a much larger and much wilder world [than he had] ever known.” This will come as no surprise to those who understand the home to be the place where we have been cast with many people we did not choose. The home is the wildest of kingdoms.

My home is such a kingdom. It has a population of six, and comes with a budget, a nutritionist, a foreign policy, 07a crucifix, a garden, transportation, education, music, quarrels, games, births, picnics, funerals, livestock, technology, laundry, sewing, a fence, a few gallons of milk a day, and loyalty.

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

The Night the Sauerkraut Exploded

The night the sauerkraut

Exploded we were all

Asleep. In dreams we heard

The awful…

Her Mamas Were Prolife

Gov. Ronald Reagan signed a milestone pro-abortion bill in 1968. California's abortions jumped from 518 in 1967 to an average of 100,000 per year from 1968 to 1974.

Reply from an American to a “Letter from an American”

Abortion was a crime in the extant states in 1868 and in the territories that became states after 1868 and the District of Columbia. Yet later, Roe was called “settled law”?