Trevin Wax reports:-

In 1911, Holbrook Jackson, a disciple of Nietzsche, wrote a book called Platitudes in the Making.  He sent a copy to G.K. Chesterton, who write, in a green pencil, a response to nearly all of Jackson’s pithy platitudes.

Here are some examples: with Jackson’s proposals in bold type, and Chesterton’s responses in italics:-

• As soon as an idea is accepted it is time to reject it. No: it is time to build another idea on it. You are always rejecting if you build nothing.
• Truth is one’s own conception of things. The Big Blunder. All thought is an attempt to discover if one’s own conception is true or not.
• No opinion matters finally: except your own. Said the man who thought he was a rabbit.
• Don’t think—do! Do think! Do!
• Every custom was once an eccentricity; every idea was once an absurdity. No, no, no. Some ideas were always absurdities. This is one of them.
• The future will look upon man as we look upon the ichthyosaurus—as an extinct monster. The “future” won’t look upon anything. No eyes.
• Doubt is the prerogative of the intellect; Faith, of the emotions. Nowadays the emotions have all the Doubt and the intellect all the Faith. The mind exists not to doubt but to decide.
• The great revolution of the future will be Nature’s revolt against man. I hope Man will not hesitate to shoot.
• When we love we are most like animals. When we love we are at our best. We are never like animals. And least of all in love.
• Love is protective only when it is free. Love is never free.

Trevin Wax asks: do we test the platitudes of our own day with anything like this kind of counter-cultural thought?

Wax concludes:-

Slogans and sayings, new terms and shifts in language, ideas that gain a foothold and then spread throughout our society—all of them should be put to the test of deliberative and biblical evaluation.