“Social Justice” created a great intellectual stir in this country when it came into existence, and has done so again after an interval of quiescence. But there is just one difference then and now. Then, as now, it embodies the fundamental principles by which justice can be secured to all men. This is what constitutes its justification for claiming the public attention. The difference is, of course, the absence of J. P. de Fonseka from the scene of battle. He was the doughty champion of all good causes. Many other men of goodwill fight in the same cause but not with the same tampered weapons. J. P. had an intense and inalienable method of approach to our problems which no man of this generation, or perhaps even coming generations can emulate. He was the born essayist making trial of a method which required laborious years to perfect. The labour was cheerfully endured, and the result was a style and method of dealing with any subject, however weighty or profound, with a humour which played continuously over his serious purpose. And J. P’s great ideal was Chesterton who brought humour into the service of the deepest philosophy. If he did not go through a long period of voluntary apprenticeship he would not have possessed that sureness of touch and skilled management of word and idea and form which made him unique as a writer. J. P. learned in a difficult school. His spectacular triumphs, repeated over a variety of subjects, makes it evident that here was no ponderous and inadequate imitation, but a spontaneous urge towards a marriage of true minds, both of which upon their respective levels, were endowed with preferences not dissimilar.
Lightness of Touch
J. P. came to his work in “Social Justice” after having done journalistic work for Chesterton. J. P.’s work was admired by Chesterton as it had a definite individuality of its own. Mere imitation would have only irritated and annoyed a man as Chesterton. But Chesterton made J. P. feel that he was a writer who deserved recognition in his own right. All this rich maturity of style, and this happy and humorous method of approach, were brought to “Social Justice” by J. P. it was an incomparable service to a journal which had perforce to deal, in the majority of its articles, with themes that were serious and either abstract or factual, allowing very little room for light treatment of any kind. It was J. P.’s strong point that he had perfected a method which permitted him a lightness of approach to the deepest philosophy He could see a world in a grain of sand. He could suggest the truth of man’s implication in the aboriginal calamity of the fall by treating of some twist and bias of the modern mind in respect of some seemingly trivial deviation from right conduct.
Mrs. Bambarawitarne was Mrs. Bambarawitarne because of Eve’s disobedience. Pius Methodius Perera was an example in the smallest matters of life, of the tremendous truth of redeeming ‘grace. The whole drama of man was recreated for us from an angle which showed the function of the Church on earth. This is genuine greatness in a writer. You laugh with him, and then realise that you have been admitted to share, in the very act, in an apocalyptic vision. As in Chesterton* so in his own measure, J. P. had a deep and undeviating undercurrent of philosophy. He was at heart a Thomist, whilst quaking with laughter at the foibles and the follies “of the world. The jest always overlay a sound and impeccable moral truth. It habitually involved, even in its wildest merriment and its seeming extravagance, a wise and discriminating judgment between right and wrong and good and evil. – A hundred years hence, J. P.’s writings in even their lighter mood will apply to the fundamental fact of human nature because their underlying philosophy is charged with a spiritual truth and profundity which cannot change by the mere fluxion of time. This is the real value of uniting Thomism with human laughter. It made Chesterton worth more than ten* thousand remote, ineffectual and pessimistic philosophers. It gave J. P. de Fonseka pride of place here as our laughing philosopher and enabled him to make philosophy palatable in the service of social justice.
Penetrating Thought
Reading J. P.’s articles in “Social Justice” over a wide interval and individually is a very different experience from reading them collectively and in close formation. As one passes on from article to article, there grows a sense of collectively deepening power. One realises an instinctive sureness of touch in the handling of each individual theme. There is compactness and close reasoning. There is not only humour breaking out at points, but a humour which pervades the whole structure of the thought with a steady glow. There is learning of a very precise kind. There is penetrating observation, and a strong moral urge. This kind of writing composed of many bright and variegated threads, is astonishingly rich in texture. There is evidence of a delicately appraising mind sure of the moral values of things. It argues a power of assured, discrimination that J. P. could send out to the readers of “Social Justice” in two consecutive issues, in June and July 1939, two brilliant articles the first of which was entitled “In Obeisance to Money” and “Aquinas and the Millionaires.” Every epithet in the first tells, it is like listening to the sharp noises of a machine-gun shots of the mind. The irony of it all is that he states without comment or marginal references the truth about one aspect of money. Every man recognises the fact that each short descriptive sentence carries “the mark of condemnation of that which is described. We realise the madness of merely mounding heaps and heaps of money without a purpose except the hypnotism of giddily seeing it grow. There is a subrisive laughter at the poor game in every calculated stroke of the brush. A dull mind will see only the mere literal truth of the description. A mind of some awareness will catch the note of cutting comment. Here is a paragraph which runs on an even keel but is strong in its method and its cumulative effect:
“Money makes the mare go, money talks, money tells, money circulates, money makes the best impression, money goes the longest way, money has the wildest reach, money buys, money waxes fat and kicks, money mesmerizes, money pushes and wins the day and the battle, money makyth man, money marks the top of the world. A man makes money, saves and puts by the money, deposits and hoards money. Governments and utterers of counterfeit coin and other successful men coin money. Bankers invent money. Poor devils and wealthy industrialists and landgrabbers borrow money. Embezzlers bolt with money. Burglars and magicians and company promoters perform with money the Vanishing trick. Millionaires and chaps bequeath money. Testators control money even when they themselves are among the faithful departed. And spirits of defunct capitalists haunt their money. The height of beauty and poetry is when young people marry money.”
There is much more than this, and everything is said variedly and sententiously throughtout.
And then follows the next issue the article “Aquinas and the Millionaires” giving you an overwhelming impression of the barrenness of money when it is1 not put to its legitimate uses and also giving us weightily but interestingly the conception of money embodied in scholastic philosophy.
Even into the titles, of his articles J. P. managed to convey something of poetry, antithesis and comment. It is all delightful and sets you in the mood for the elaborate comment to follow. All of which means that J. P. was a mind of unusual awareness, capable of making sustained distinctions, putting humour to the uses of traditional truth, educating by epigram and imparting the rich and lasting flavour of a keenly Thomistic mind to all that he did. J. P. was a glorious apostle of social justice, a lover of his fellow men and an essayist who could cure without cauterizing and coming to us always in a gust of healthy, humane and tranquillizing laughter, for his wisdom was of that kind which stills anger and makes us genially join in the laughter which accompanies the unmasking of our human foibles, faults and failures. His laughter was allied, in Chesterton’s phrase to the “giant laughter of Christian men”. Its resounding and healing echoes will always remain a comforting memory with the readers of “Social Justice”
Quintus Delilkhan
{Social Justice, 1951).