Wraiths and Reason

Natural and supernatural reality are both subject to reason. If the natural is divorced from reason it leads to the irrational reductionism of rationalism, a belief in nothing but matter or, alternatively, a belief in nothing but mind. If, on the other hand, the supernatural is divorced from reason it leads to the weirdest and most bizarre forms of superstition.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Hamlet’s words to his friend Horatio after they had experienced the apparition of the Ghost are a reminder of the strange and mysterious world in which we find ourselves. “O day and night,” says the astonished Horatio, “but this is wonderous strange!”

“And therefore as a stranger give it welcome,” Hamlet replies.

Hamlet’s open-minded recognition of the spiritual and supernatural dimension of reality opens our own minds and imaginations to the possibility of supernatural spirits. We are forced to take the Ghost seriously because he is seen by several people at once, including the skeptical Horatio. We discover later that the Ghost is “honest” when Hamlet tests the veracity of the Ghost’s words by staging the play which exposes King Claudius as his brother’s murderer. The Ghost is, therefore, not merely real but is a teller of the truth.

On the other hand, as we see in the words and deeds of the weird sisters in Macbeth, spirits can also be wicked and disseminators of deception. The witches are as real as the Ghost of Hamlet’s Father because they are shown in the opening scene as stand-alone characters hellbent on evil. They are then seen and heard by two people simultaneously, Macbeth and Banquo, precluding the possibility that they are mere hallucinations.

If, however, the spirits are real, it follows that they must be realistic, which is to say that they must conform to reason. If they fail to satisfy the reader’s reason, the necessary willing suspension of disbelief will be impossible. This necessary realism in works of the imagination was addressed sublimely by J. R. R. Tolkien:

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion.

This exposition of fantasy’s inseparability from reason reflects Tolkien’s Christian realism which acknowledges and insists upon the inseparability of faith and reason.

Natural and supernatural reality are both subject to reason. If the natural is divorced from reason it leads to the irrational reductionism of rationalism, a belief in nothing but matter or, alternatively, a belief in nothing but mind. If there’s nothing but matter, nothing really matters because morality is an illusion; and if there’s nothing but mind, we don’t mind because nothing really matters! The consequence in both cases is the morbid delusion of which Tolkien speaks, a reduction of reality to deconstructed meaninglessness. If, on the other hand, the supernatural is divorced from reason, it leads to the weirdest and most bizarre forms of superstition.

This understanding of the indissoluble marriage of faith and reason animates the greatest writers of fantasy fiction. This is why Tolkien can say that fairy stories hold up a mirror to man. They show us ourselves, not merely physically but metaphysically. They show us who we are, who we should be and who we shouldn’t be. This is why Tolkien can say of his own greatest work, The Lord of the Rings, that it is “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work”.

Perhaps the greatest living writer of what might be called realistic fantasy or fantastic realism is Tim Powers, a bestselling practitioner of the art whose novels are page-turners because they are plot-twisters. On almost every page, his characters are twisted this way and that by their encounters with supernatural forces. As with Tolkien, of whom he is a noble heir, Powers peoples his novels with fallible and often likeable characters who fall under the spell of malevolent spirits or who resist wrathful wraiths with heroic fortitude.

If Tim Powers has inherited Tolkien’s mantle, it is gratifying to see a new generation of writers who are following in his and Tolkien’s fantastic footsteps. One such writer is Eleanor Bourg Nicholson, whose latest novel, Wake of Malice, has earned the admiration of Tim Powers himself: “Wake of Malice is purely a delight – lively characters in a richly presented Irish village, pagan rites and ancient unnatural perils – this book lets you live it all.”

As with her two previous novels, A Bloody Habit and Brother Wolf, Mrs. Nicholson’s flights into gothic ghoulishness are set in the early years of the twentieth century and feature the Dominican priest and exorcist, Father Thomas Edmund Gilroy. It is intriguing and surely not coincidental that Father Gilroy is an exact contemporary of Chesterton’s priest detective, Father Brown. The two priests have much in common. They both fight the deadly darkness of evil with the light and life of faith and reason. They do so armed with the sacraments of the Church but also with the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. If there is a difference, it is in the worlds that they inhabit. Father Brown lives a relatively mundane life in a relatively mundane world, stumbling upon crimes as if by accident. Father Gilroy lives in a world of gothic horror reminiscent of the grotesque fictional worlds of Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker; he is a hunter in a haunted world. Father Brown discovers the demented motives of wicked men; Father Gilroy discovers the demonic actions of wicked spirits. Father Brown exercises reason to expose rakes; Father Gilroy exercises reason to exorcise wraiths.

The parallels and differences between the two priest detectives invites a comparison between the two authors who created these intriguing characters. G. K. Chesterton was writing during the Catholic literary revival which flourished in England in the first half of the last century. That revival floundered in the midst of the cultural malaise that followed the madness of the sex-obsessed sixties. Today, and for the past ten years or so, there is every evidence of a new Catholic literary revival. Mrs. Nicholson is one of many good writers who are emerging in these exciting times. Well might we hope and pray that this new revival will have the same edifying impact as that earlier revival that gave us the works of Chesterton and Tolkien.

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The featured image is courtesy of Pixabay.