ALARMS AND DISCURSIONS
by G. K. Chesterton
Introductory: On Gargoyles
Alone at some distance from the wasting walls of a disused
abbey I found half sunken in the grass the grey and goggle-eyed
visage of one of those graven monsters that made the ornamental
water-spouts in the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. It lay there,
scoured by ancient rains or striped by recent fungus, but still
looking like the head of some huge dragon slain by a primeval hero.
And as I looked at it, I thought of the meaning of the grotesque,
and passed into some symbolic reverie of the three great stages of art.
I
Once upon a time there lived upon an island a merry and innocent people,
mostly shepherds and tillers of the earth. They were republicans,
like all primitive and simple souls; they talked over their affairs
under a tree, and the nearest approach they had to a personal ruler
was a sort of priest or white witch who said their prayers for them.
They worshipped the sun, not idolatrously, but as the golden crown
of the god whom all such infants see almost as plainly as the sun.
Now this priest was told by his people to build a great tower,
pointing to the sky in salutation of the Sun-god; and he pondered long
and heavily before he picked his materials. For he was resolved to use
nothing that was not almost as clear and exquisite as sunshine itself;
he would use nothing that was not washed as white as the rain
can wash the heavens, nothing that did not sparkle as spotlessly
as that crown of God. He would have nothing grotesque or obscure;
he would not have even anything emphatic or even anything mysterious.
He would have all the arches as light as laughter and as candid as logic.
He built the temple in three concentric courts, which were
cooler and more exquisite in substance each than the other.
For the outer wall was a hedge of white lilies, ranked so thick
that a green stalk was hardly to be seen; and the wall within
that was of crystal, which smashed the sun into a million stars.
And the wall within that, which was the tower itself, was a tower
of pure water, forced up in an everlasting fountain; and upon the very
tip and crest of that foaming spire was one big and blazing diamond,
which the water tossed up eternally and caught again as a child
catches a ball.
"Now," said the priest, "I have made a tower which is a little
worthy of the sun."
