Continuing my jaunt through G.K. Chesterton’s books, I’ve just finished re-reading Heretics, an odd and not entirely satisfactory little book in which Chesterton examines the beliefs of many of the prominent people of his day. Toward the end of the book, he has a few words about progress, about the notion that we are, mentally, ethically, socially, every day in every way getting better and better:

The vice of the modern notion of mental progress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds, the effacing of boundaries, the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth, it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a machine for coming to conclusions; if it cannot come to conclusions it is rusty. When we hear of a man too clever to believe, we are hearing of something having almost the character of a contradiction in terms. It is like hearing of a nail that was too good to hold down a carpet; or a bolt that was too strong to keep a door shut.

What would we say to a physicist who told us that the goal of physics is to know gradually less and less about the physical world? The goal of physics is to know more and more, with more and more certainty, about the physical world. And the same is true in all fields of knowledge, philosophy and religion not least. But if you’d rather not know, well…Chesterton has a word just for you.

Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.