February 02, 2004
The Wisdom of Father Brown
On lie detectors and circulation:
"I've been reading," said Flambeau, "of this new psychometric method they talk about so much, especially in America. You know what I mean; they put a pulsometer on a man's wrist and judge by how his heart goes at the pronunciation of certain words. What do you think of it?"
"I think it very interesting," replied Father Brown; "it reminds me of that interesting idea in the Dark Ages that blood would flow from a corpse if the murderer touched it."
"Do you really mean," demanded his friend, "that you think the two methods equally valuable?"
"I think them equally valueless," replied Brown. "Blood flows, fast or slow, in dead folk or living, for so many more million reasons than we can ever know. Blood will have to flow very funnily; blood will have to flow up the Matterhorn, before I will take it as a sign that I am to shed it."
"The method," remarked the other, "has been guaranteed by some of the greatest American men of science."
"What sentimentalists men of science are!" exclaimed Father Brown, "and how much more sentimental must American men of science be! Who but a Yankee would think of proving anything from heart-throbs? Why, they must be as sentimental as a man who thinks a woman is in love with him if she blushes! That's a test from the circulation of the blood, discovered by the immortal Harvey; and a jolly rotten test, too."
On crime amongst the Irish:
It had happened nearly twenty years before, when he was chaplain to his co-religionists in a prison in Chicago -- where the Irish population displayed a capacity both for crime and penitence which kept him tolerably busy.
On firearms:
"Then I remembered that beyond those ploughed fields he was crossing lay Pilgrim's Pond, for which (you will remember) the convict was keeping his bullet; and I sent my walking-stick flying."
"A brilliant piece of rapid deduction," said Father Brown; "but had he got a gun?"
As Usher stopped abruptly in his walk the priest added apologetically: "I've been told a bullet is not half so useful without it."
On Man:
"You always forget," observed his companion, "that the reliable machine always has to be worked by an unreliable machine."
"Why, what do you mean?" asked the detective.
"I mean Man," said Father Brown, "the most unreliable machine I know of. I don't want to be rude; and I don't think you will consider Man to be an offensive or inaccurate description of yourself."
On Sin:
"What do you mean?" demanded the other. "Why should he be innocent of that crime?"
"Why, bless us all!" cried Father Brown in one of his rare moments of animation, "why, because he's guilty of the other crimes! I don't know what you people are made of. You seem to think that all sins are kept together in a bag. You talk as if a miser on Monday were always a spendthrift on Tuesday."
On Atheism:
"You are more of a mystery than all the others," she said desperately; "but I feel there might be a heart in your mystery."
"What we all dread most," said the priest, in a low voice, "is a maze with no centre. That is why atheism is only a nightmare."
Posted by Jared at February 2, 2004 03:12 PM | TrackBack