"Whatever the scientists may say, if we take the supernatural out of life, we leave only the unnatural"
About this Quote
Barr’s line is a neat Victorian trapdoor: it pretends to concede authority to “the scientists,” then quietly yanks that authority out from under them. The opening clause is a rhetorical shrug, a way of saying, yes, yes, the lab coats have their say - but the real verdict belongs to the moral imagination. It’s not an argument against science so much as an argument about what science can’t supply: meaning, mystery, the felt texture of being alive.
The clever move is her inversion of terms. You’d expect “supernatural” to be the irrational add-on and “natural” to be what remains once it’s removed. Barr flips it: subtract the supernatural and you don’t get the natural, you get the “unnatural.” That’s an accusation, not a definition. She’s implying that a purely material account of life doesn’t just feel incomplete; it actively distorts the human experience, producing a world that is technically coherent but spiritually grotesque.
As a novelist, Barr is also defending her own turf. Fiction trades in the unseen - motive, conscience, grace, dread, coincidence that feels like fate. Late 19th-century culture was saturated with Darwinian aftershocks, industrialization, and a growing confidence in measurement as a worldview. Barr’s subtext is that modernity’s disenchantment isn’t neutral; it’s a kind of violence done to reality, flattening it into mechanism.
The line works because it weaponizes a common anxiety of the era: that progress might explain everything and, in doing so, make life smaller. Barr offers a counter-threat: banish the supernatural and you don’t become enlightened; you become alienated.
The clever move is her inversion of terms. You’d expect “supernatural” to be the irrational add-on and “natural” to be what remains once it’s removed. Barr flips it: subtract the supernatural and you don’t get the natural, you get the “unnatural.” That’s an accusation, not a definition. She’s implying that a purely material account of life doesn’t just feel incomplete; it actively distorts the human experience, producing a world that is technically coherent but spiritually grotesque.
As a novelist, Barr is also defending her own turf. Fiction trades in the unseen - motive, conscience, grace, dread, coincidence that feels like fate. Late 19th-century culture was saturated with Darwinian aftershocks, industrialization, and a growing confidence in measurement as a worldview. Barr’s subtext is that modernity’s disenchantment isn’t neutral; it’s a kind of violence done to reality, flattening it into mechanism.
The line works because it weaponizes a common anxiety of the era: that progress might explain everything and, in doing so, make life smaller. Barr offers a counter-threat: banish the supernatural and you don’t become enlightened; you become alienated.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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