The Third Thing

On occasion, I will turn my gaze from my shiny computer to my bookshelf just behind me. It’s filled with books most of which are at least fifty years old. The contrast between modern technology and antiquarian literature provides a bit of balance in my workspace located on a second-floor landing at the top of the stairs in our quaint Victorian home.

Sometimes a book will seemingly jump from its place and demand attention. This post is a result of such an occasion. The faded title of a 1931 publication caught my eye, “Will Men Be Gods?”. The author isn’t well known, but the introduction is by G.K. Chesterton, which is of course the reason for its placement in my collection.

The thesis is of the book is that humanism is focused on the wrong kind of happiness, a failed quest that can only be corrected by being redirected beyond the human condition to something far greater. Chesterton sets up the author’s argument by pointing out the real challenge in getting humans to love other humans. Their ideal love for humanity often fails the test of loving their real neighbors. While they love humans in an abstract way, a romanticized way, it’s the person right in front of them demanding one thing or another, or talking too loud, or simply being in the way, whom they despise.

Chesterton’s solution is to point them towards the “lover of ordinary men, who loves them in an extraordinary way.” He describes this as the “third thing,” with a subtle reference to the Incarnation as the ultimate foundation for human love. Chesterton writes:

“Men can admire perfect charity before they practice even imperfect charity; and that is by far the most practical way of getting them to practice it. It is not leave men merely staring at each other and standing face to face to criticize and grow weary; it is rather to see them standing side by side and looking out together at a third thing; the world’s desire and the love-affair of all humanity; which is really a human sun that can shine upon the evil and the good.”