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ORTHODOXY
_by_
G.K. CHESTERTON
JOHN LANE
THE BODLEY HEAD LTD
_First published in_.......................... 1908
_printed_..................................... 1908
_Reprinted_................................... 1909
_Reprinted_................................... 1911
_Reprinted_................................... 1915
_Reprinted_................................... 1919
_Reprinted_................................... 1921
_Reprinted_................................... 1924
_Reprinted_................................... 1926
_First published in "The Week-End Library" in_ 1927
_Reprinted_................................... 1934
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
_TO MY MOTHER_
_CONTENTS_
_Chap._ _Page_
I. INTRODUCTION IN DEFENCE OF EVERYTHING ELSE 11
II. THE MANIAC ................................ 20
III. THE SUICIDE OF THOUGHT ................... 50
IV. THE ETHICS OF ELFLAND ..................... 76
V. THE FLAG OF THE WORLD ...................... 117
VI. THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY ............. 146
VII. THE ETERNAL REVOLUTION ................... 186
VIII. THE ROMANCE OF ORTHODOXY ................ 228
IX. AUTHORITY AND THE ADVENTURER .............. 259
_ORTHODOXY_
CHAPTER I.--_Introduction in Defence of Everything Else_
The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to a
challenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel. When
some time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers, under
the name of "Heretics," several critics for whose intellect I have a
warm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S. Street) said that it was
all very well for me to tell everybody to affirm his cosmic theory, but
that I had carefully avoided supporting my precepts with example. "I
will begin to worry about my philosophy," said Mr. Street, "when Mr.
Chesterton has given us his." It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to
make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest
provocation. But after all, though Mr. Street has inspired and created
this book, he need not read it. If he does read it, he will find that in
its pages I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of
mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the
philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my
philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made
me.
I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an English
yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England
under the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. I
always find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to write
this fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes of
philosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impression
that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to
plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be
the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned to
deny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, or
at any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominant
emotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the rich
romantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a most
enviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What
could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the
fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane
security of coming home again? What could be better than to have all
the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity of
landing there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self up
to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy
tears, that it was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me the
main problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem of
this book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world and
yet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged
citizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give
us at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour
of being our own town? To show that a faith or a philosophy is true from
every standpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a much bigger
book than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument; and this
is the path that I here propose to follow. I wish to set forth my faith
as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that
mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly
named romance. For the very word "romance" has in it the mystery and
ancient meaning of Rome. Any one setting out to dispute anything ought
always to begin by saying what he does not dispute. Beyond stating what
he proposes to prove he should always state what he does not propose to
prove. The thing I do not propose to prove, the thing I propose to take
as common ground between myself and any average reader, is this
desirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full of
a poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate always
seems to have desired. If a man says that extinction is better than
existence or blank existence better than variety and adventure, then he
is not one of the ordinary people to whom I am talking. If a man prefers
nothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met in
this western society in which I live would agree to the general
proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination
of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so
to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of
welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being
merely comfortable. It is _this_ achievement of my creed that I shall
chiefly pursue in these pages.
But I have a peculiar reason for mentioning the man in a yacht, who
discovered England. For I am that man in a yacht. I discovered England.
I do not see how this book can avoid being egotistical; and I do not
quite see (to tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull. Dullness
will, however, free me from the charge which I most lament; the charge
of being flippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to
despise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this
is the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so
contemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the
indefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw
lived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a
man of his mental activity could invent a sophistry every six minutes.
It is as easy as lying; because it is lying. The truth is, of course,
that Mr. Shaw is cruelly hampered by the fact that he cannot tell any
lie unless he thinks it is the truth. I find myself under the same
intolerable bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because I
thought it funny; though, of course, I have had ordinary human
vain-glory, and may have thought it funny because I had said it. It is
one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a
creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the
rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks
as if he didn't. One searches for truth, but it may be that one pursues
instinctively the more extraordinary truths. And I offer this book with
the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write,
and regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of poor clowning
or a single tiresome joke.
For if this book is a joke it is a joke against me. I am the man who
with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before. If
there is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own
expense; for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to set
foot in Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my
elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think my
case more ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader can accuse me here
of trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this story, and no
rebel shall hurl me from my throne. I freely confess all the idiotic
ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other
solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried
to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was
eighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfully
juvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the
fittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I have
discovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were not
mine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous
position of being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, Heaven
forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in
inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of
civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first to
find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to
found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I
discovered that it was orthodoxy.
It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account of this happy
fiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy to read how I gradually
learnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of some
dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt from my
catechism--if I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be some
entertainment in reading how I found at last in an anarchist club or a
Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish church.
If any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the field or
the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains of
youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain conviction
of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But there is in
everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and
nothing on earth would induce me to read it.
I add one purely pedantic note which comes, as a note naturally should,
at the beginning of the book. These essays are concerned only to discuss
the actual fact that the central Christian theology (sufficiently
summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root of energy and sound
ethics. They are not intended to discuss the very fascinating but quite
different question of what is the present seat of authority for the
proclamation of that creed. When the word "orthodoxy" is used here it
means the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself
Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct
of those who held such a creed. I have been forced by mere space to
confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the
matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves got
it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly
autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual nature
of the authority, Mr. G.S. Street has only to throw me another
challenge, and I will write him another book.