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Br THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 HERETICS. Fourth Edition. 
 
 THE NAPOLEON OF NOTTING 
 HILL : A Romance. Illustrated 
 by W. Graham Robertson. 
 
ORTHODOXY 
 
 By 
 GILBERT K. ^HESTERTON 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANi", THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK : JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMIX 
 
912506 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
TO mr MOTHER 
 
 
 
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CONTENTS 
 
 Chap. 
 
 I. Introduction in Defence of Every 
 THING Else 
 
 II. The Maniac 
 
 III. The Suicide of Thought 
 
 IV. The Ethics of Elfland. 
 V. The Flag of the World 
 
 VI. The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 VII. The Eternal Revolution . . 
 
 VIII. The Romance of Orthodoxy . 
 
 IX. Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 Page 
 
 II 
 
 20 
 
 50 
 
 79 
 117 
 
 146 
 
 186 
 
 228 
 
 259 
 
The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029192478 
 
ORTHODOXY 
 
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 sup- 
 porting 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 
 
 II 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 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, how- 
 ever, 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 Illus- 
 tration. There will probably be a general Im- 
 pression 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 
 
 12 
 
In Defence of Everything Else 
 
 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 
 
 13 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 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 aU 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 thh 
 achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly 
 pursue in these pages. 
 
 But I have a peculiar reason for mentioning 
 14 
 
In Defence of Everything Else 
 
 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 intoler- 
 able bondage. I never in my life said any- 
 thing 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 
 
 15 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 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 
 
 i6 
 
In Defence of Everything Else 
 
 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 1 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 
 aU 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 
 
 17 B 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 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 every- 
 thing 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 him- 
 self 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 
 
 i8 
 
In Defence of Everything Else 
 
 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. 
 
 19 
 
Chapter II — The Maniac 
 
 THOROUGHLY worldly people 
 never understand even the world ; 
 they rely altogether on a few 
 cynical maxims which are not 
 true. Once I remember walking with a 
 prosperous publisher, who made a remark 
 which I had often heard before ; it is, indeed, 
 almost a motto of the modern world. Yet 
 I had heard it once too often, and I saw 
 suddenly that there was nothing in it. The 
 publisher said of somebody, " That man will 
 get on ; he believes in himself." And I 
 remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my 
 eye caught an omnibus on which was written 
 " Hanwell." I said to him, " Shall I tell you 
 where the men are who believe most in them- 
 selves ? For I can tell you. I know of men 
 who believe in themselves more colossally than 
 Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the 
 fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide 
 you to the thrones of the Super-men. The 
 men who really believe in themselves are all in 
 lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there 
 were a good many men after all who believed in 
 themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. 
 
 30 
 
The Maniac 
 
 " Yes, there are," I retorted, " and you of all 
 men ought to know them. That drunken poet 
 from whom you would not take a dreary 
 tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly 
 minister with an epic from whom you were 
 hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. 
 If you consulted your business experience 
 instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, 
 you would know that believing in himself is 
 one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors 
 who can't act believe in themselves ; and 
 debtors who won't pay. It would be much 
 truer to say that a man will certainly fail, 
 because he believes in himself. Complete self- 
 confidence is not merely a sin ; complete self- 
 confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in 
 one's self is ^hysterical and superstitious belief 
 like believing in Joanna Southcote : the man 
 who has it has ' Hanwell ' written on his face 
 as plain as it is written on that omnibus." 
 And to all this my friend the publisher made 
 this very deep and effective reply, " Well, if a 
 man is not to believe in himself, in what is he 
 to believe ? " After a long pause I replied, 
 *'I will go home and write a book in answer to 
 that question." This is the book that I have 
 written in answer to it. 
 
 But I think this book may well start where 
 
 21 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 our argument started — in the neighbourhood 
 of the mad-house. Modern masters of science 
 are much impressed with the need of begin- 
 ning all inquiry with a fact. The ancient 
 masters of religion were quite equally impressed 
 with that necessity. They began with the fact 
 of sin — a fact as practical as potatoes. Whether 
 or nca man could be washed in miraculous 
 waters, there was no doubt at any rate that he 
 wanted washing. But certain religious leaders 
 in London, not mere materialists, have begun 
 in our day not to deny the highly disputable 
 water, but to deny the indisputable dirt. Certain 
 new theologians dispute original sin, which 
 is the only part of Christian theology which 
 can really be proved. Some followers of the 
 Reverend R. J. Campbell, in their almost too 
 fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, 
 which they cannot see even in their dreams. But 
 they essentially deny human sin, which they 
 can see in the street. The strongest saints and 
 the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as 
 the starting-point of their argument. If it be 
 true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel 
 exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the 
 religious philosopher can only draw one of two 
 deductions. He must either deny the existence 
 of God, as all atheists do ; or he must deny the 
 
The Maniac 
 
 present union between God and man, as all 
 Christians do. The new theologians seem to 
 think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny 
 the cat. 
 
 In this remarkable situation it is plainly not 
 now possible (with any hope of a universal 
 appeal) to start, as our fathers did, with the 
 fact of sin. This very fact which was to them 
 (and is to me) as plain as a pikestaff, is the 
 very fact that has been specially diluted or 
 denied. But though moderns deny the exist- 
 ence of sin, I do not think that they have yet 
 denied the existence of a lunatic asylum. We 
 all agree still that there is a collapse of the 
 intellect as unmistakable as a falling house. 
 Men deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For 
 the purpose of our primary argument the one 
 may very well stand where the other stood. 
 I mean that as all thoughts and theories were 
 once judged by whether they tended to make a 
 man lose his soul, so for our present purpose 
 all modern thoughts and theories may be judged 
 by whether they tend to make a man lose his 
 
 wits. 
 
 It is true that some speak lightly and loosely 
 of insanity as in itself attractive. But a 
 moment's thought will show that if disease is 
 beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease. 
 
 n 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 A blind man may be picturesque ; but it 
 requires two eyes to see the picture. And 
 similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can 
 only be enjoyed by the sane. To the insane 
 man his insanity is quite prosaic, because it is 
 quite true, A man who thinks himself a 
 chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken. 
 A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to 
 himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the 
 homogeneity of his mind which makes him 
 dull, and which makes him mad. It is only 
 because we see the irony of his idea that we 
 think him even amusing ; it is only because he 
 does not see the irony of his idea that he is put 
 in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only 
 strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike 
 odd people. This is why ordinary people have 
 a much more exciting time ; while odd people are 
 always complaining of the dulness of life. This 
 is also why the new novels die so quickly, and 
 why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The 
 old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human 
 boy ; it is his adventures that are startling ; 
 they startle him because he is normal. But in 
 the modern psychological novel the hero is 
 abnormal ; the centre is not central. Hence 
 the fiercest adventures fail to affect him ade- 
 quately, and the book is monotonous. You 
 
 24 
 
The Maniac 
 
 can make a story out of a hero among dragons ; 
 but not out of a dragon among dragons. The 
 fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in 
 a mad world. The sober realistic novel of 
 to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will 
 do in a duU world. 
 
 Let us begin, then, with the mad-house ; from 
 this evil and fantastic inn let us set forth on our 
 intellectual journey. Now, if we are to glance 
 at the philosophy of sanity, the first thing to do 
 in the matter is to blot out one big and common 
 mistake. There is a notion adrift everywhere 
 that imagination, especially mystical imagina- 
 tion, is dangerous to man's mental balance. 
 Poets are commonly spoken of as psycho- 
 logically unreliable ; and generally there is a 
 vague association between wreathing laurels in 
 your hair and sticking straws in it. Facts and 
 history utterly contradict this view. Most of 
 the very great poets have been not only sane, 
 but extremely business-like ; and if Shakespeare 
 ever really held horses, it was because he was 
 much the safest man to hold them. Imagination 
 does not breed insanity. Exactly what does 
 breed insanity is reason. Poets do not go 
 mad ; but chess-players do. Mathematicians 
 go mad, and cashiers ; but creative artists very 
 seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any 
 
 25 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 sense attacking logic : I only say that this 
 danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. 
 Artistic paternity is as wholesome as physical 
 paternity. Moreover, it is worthy of remark 
 that when a poet really was morbid it was 
 commonly because he had some weak spot of 
 rationality on his brain. Poe, for instance, 
 really was morbid ; not because he was poetical, 
 but because he was specially analytical. Even 
 chess was too poetical for him ; he disliked 
 chess because it was full of knights and castles, 
 like a poem. He avowedly preferred the black 
 discs of draughts, because they were more like 
 the mere black dots on a diagram. Perhaps 
 the strongest case of all is this : that only one 
 great English poet went mad, Cowper. And 
 he was definitely driven mad by logic, by the 
 ugly and alien logic of predestination. Poetry 
 was not the disease, but the medicine ; poetry 
 partly kept him in health. He could some- 
 times forget the red and thirsty hell to which 
 his hideous necessitarianism dragged him among 
 the wide waters and the white flat lilies of the 
 Ouse. He was damned by John Calvin ; he 
 was almost saved by John Gilpin. Everywhere 
 we see that men do not go mad by dreaming. 
 Critics are much madder than poets. Homer 
 is complete and calm enough ; it is his critics 
 
 26 
 
The Maniac 
 
 who tear him into extravagant tatters. Shake- 
 speare is quite himself; it is only some of his 
 critics who have discovered that he was some- 
 body else. And though St. John the Evangelist 
 saw many strange monsters in his vision, he 
 saw no creature so wild as one of his own com- 
 mentators. The general fact is simple. Poetry 
 is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea ; 
 reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so 
 make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, 
 like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. 
 To accept everything is an exercise, to under- 
 stand everything a strain. The poet only 
 desires exaltation and expansion, a world to 
 stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get 
 his head into the heavens. It is the logician 
 who seeks to get the heavens into his head. 
 And it is his head that splits. 
 
 It is a small matter, but not irrelevant, that 
 this striking mistake is commonly supported by 
 a striking misquotation. We have all heard 
 people cite the celebrated line of Dryden as 
 " Great genius is to madness near allied." But 
 Dryden did not say that great genius was to 
 madness near allied. Dryden was a great 
 genius himself, and knew better. It would 
 have been hard to find a man more romantic 
 than he, or more sensible. What Dryden said 
 
 27 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 was this, " Great wits are oft to madness near 
 allied " ; and that is true. It is the pure 
 promptitude of the intellect that is in peril of a 
 breakdown. Also people might remember of 
 what sort of man Dryden was talking. He 
 was not talking of any unworldly visionary 
 like Vaughan or George Herbert. He was 
 talking of a cynical man of the world, a sceptic, 
 a diplomatist, a great practical politician. Such 
 men are indeed to madness near allied. Their 
 incessant calculation of their own brains and 
 other people's brains is a dangerous trade. It 
 is always perilous to the mind to reckon up the 
 mind. A flippant person has asked why we 
 say, " As mad as a hatter." A more flippant 
 person might answer that a hatter is mad 
 because he has to measure the human head. 
 
 And if great reasoners are often maniacal, it 
 is equally true that maniacs are commonly 
 great reasoners. When I was engaged in a 
 controversy with the Clarion on the matter of 
 free will, that able writer Mr. R. B. Suthers 
 said that free will was lunacy, because it meant 
 causeless actions, and the actions of a lunatic 
 would be causeless. I do not dwell here upon 
 the disastrous lapse in determinist logic. 
 Obviously if any actions, even a lunatic's, can 
 be causeless, determinism is done for. If the 
 
 28 
 
The Maniac 
 
 chain of causation can be broken for a madman 
 it can be broken for a man. But my purpose 
 is to point out something more practical. It 
 was natural, perhaps, that a modern Marxian 
 Socialist should not know anything about free 
 will. But it was certainly remarkable that a 
 modern Marxian Socialist should not know 
 anything about lunatics. Mr. Suthers evidently 
 did not know anything about lunatics. The 
 last thing that can be said of a lunatic is that his 
 actions are causeless. If any human acts may 
 loosely be called causeless, they are the minor 
 acts of a healthy man ; whistling as he walks ; 
 slashing the grass with a stick ; kicking his 
 heels or rubbing his hands. It is the happy 
 man who does the useless things ; the sick 
 man is not strong enough to be idle. It is 
 exactly such careless and causeless actions that 
 the madman could never understand ; for the 
 madman (like the determinist) generally sees 
 too much cause in everything. The madman 
 would read a conspiratorial significance into 
 those empty activities. He would think that 
 the lopping of the grass was an attack on 
 private property. He would think that the 
 kicking of the heels was a signal to an accom- 
 plice. If the madman could for an instant 
 become careless, he would become sane. 
 
 29 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 Every one who has had the misfortune to talk 
 with people in the heart or on the edge of 
 mental disorder, knows that their most sinister 
 quality is a horrible clarity of detail ; a con- 
 necting of one thing with another in a map 
 more elaborate than a maze. If you argue 
 with a madman, it is extremely probable that 
 you wiU get the worst of it ; for in many ways 
 his mind moves all the quicker for not being 
 delayed by the things that go with good 
 judgment. He is not hampered by a sense of 
 humour or by charity, or by the dumb 
 certainties of experience. He is the more 
 logical for losing certain sane affections. 
 Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in 
 this respect a misleading one. The madman is 
 not the man who has lost his reason. The 
 madman is the man who has lost everything 
 except his reason. 
 
 The madman's explanation of a thing is 
 always complete, and often in a purely rational 
 sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, 
 the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at 
 least unanswerable ; this may be observed 
 specially in the two or three commonest kinds 
 of madness. If a man says (for instance) that 
 men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot 
 dispute it except by saying that all the men 
 
 3<? 
 
The Maniac 
 
 deny that they are conspirators ; which is 
 exactly what conspirators would do. His 
 explanation covers the facts as much as yours. 
 Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of 
 England, it is no complete answer to say that 
 the existing authorities call him mad ; for if he 
 were King of England that might be the wisest 
 thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if 
 a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no 
 answer to tell him that the world denies his 
 divinity ; for the world denied Christ's. 
 
 Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt 
 to trace his error in exact terms, we shaU not 
 find it quite so easy as we had supposed. 
 Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing 
 it is to say this : that his mind moves in a 
 perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is 
 quite as infinite as a large circle ; but, though 
 it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the 
 same way the insane explanation is quite as 
 complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. 
 A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it 
 is not the world. There is such a thing as a 
 narrow universality ; there is such a thing as 
 a small and cramped eternity ; you may see 
 it in many modern religions. Now, speaking 
 quite externally and empirically, we may say 
 that the strongest and most unmistakable mark 
 
 31 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 of madness is this combination between a 
 logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. 
 The lunatic's theory explains a large number 
 of things, but it does not explain them in a 
 large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing 
 with a mind that was growing morbid, we 
 should be chiefly concerned not so much to 
 give it arguments as to give it air, to convince 
 it that there was something cleaner and cooler 
 outside the suiFocation of a single argument. 
 Suppose, for instance, it were the first case that 
 I took as typical ; suppose it were the case of 
 a man who accused everybody of conspiring 
 against him. If we could express our deepest 
 feelings of protest and appeal against this 
 obsession, I suppose we should say something 
 like this : " Oh, I admit that you have your 
 case and have it by heart, and that many things 
 do fit into other things as you say. I admit 
 that your explanation explains a great deal ; 
 but what a great deal it leaves out ! Are there 
 no other stories in the world except yours ; 
 and are all men busy with your business ? 
 Suppose we grant the details ; perhaps when 
 the man in the street did not seem to see you 
 it was only his cunning ; perhaps when the 
 policeman asked you your name it was only 
 because he knew it already. But how much 
 32 
 
The Maniac 
 
 happier you would be if you only knew that 
 these people cared nothing about you ! How 
 much larger your life would be if your self 
 could become smaller in it ; if you could really 
 look at other men with common curiosity and 
 pleasure ; if you could see them walking as 
 they are in their sunny selfishness and their 
 virile indifference ! You would begin to be 
 interested in them, because they were not 
 interested in you. You would break out of 
 this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your 
 own little plot is always being played, and you 
 would find yourself under a freer sky, in a 
 street full of splendid strangers." Or suppose 
 it were the second case of madness, that of a 
 man who claims the crown, your impulse 
 would be to answer, "All right ! Perhaps you 
 know that you are the King of England ; but 
 why do you care ? Make one magnificent eiFort 
 and you wUl be a human being and look down 
 on aU the kings of the earth." Or it might 
 be the third case, of the madman who called 
 himself Christ. If we said what we felt, we 
 should say, " So you are the Creator and 
 Redeemer of the world : but what a small 
 world it must be ! What a little heaven you 
 must inhabit, with angels no bigger than 
 butterflies ! How sad it must be to be God ; 
 
 33 c 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 and an inadequate God ! Is there really no 
 life fuller and no love more marvellous than 
 yours ; and is it really in your small and 
 painful pity that all flesh must put its faith ? 
 How much happier you would be, how much 
 more of you there would be, if the hammer of 
 a higher God could smash your small cosmos, 
 scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you 
 in the open, free like other men to look up as 
 well as down ! " 
 
 And it must be remembered that the most 
 purely practical science does take this view of 
 mental evil ; it does not seek to argue with it 
 like a heresy, but simply to snap it like a 
 spell. Neither modern science nor ancient 
 religion believes in complete free thought. 
 Theology rebukes certain thoughts by calling 
 them blasphemous. Science rebukes certain 
 thoughts by calling them morbid. For ex- 
 ample, some religious societies discouraged 
 men more or less from thinking about sex. 
 The new scientific society definitely discourages 
 men from thinking about death ; it is a fact, 
 but it is considered a morbid fact. And in 
 dealing with those whose morbidity has a 
 touch of mania, modern science cares far less 
 for pure logic than a dancing Dervish. In 
 these cases it is not enough that the unhappy 
 
 34 
 
The Maniac 
 
 man should desire truth ; he must desire 
 health. Nothing can save him but a blind 
 hunger for normality, like that of a beast. A 
 man cannot think himself out of mental evil ; 
 for it is actually the organ of thought that has 
 become diseased, ungovernable, and, as it 
 were, independent. He can only be saved by 
 will or faith. The moment his mere reason 
 moves, it moves in the old circular rut ; he 
 wiU go round and round his logical circle, just 
 as a man in a third-class carriage on the Inner 
 Circle will go round and round the Inner Circle 
 unless he performs the voluntary, vigorous, and 
 mystical act of getting out at Gower Street. 
 Decision is the whole business here ; a door 
 must be shut for ever. Every remedy is a 
 desperate remedy. Every cure is a miraculous 
 cure. Curing a madman is not arguing with a 
 philosopher ; it is casting out a devil. And 
 however quietly doctors and psychologists 
 may go to work in the matter, their attitude 
 is profoundly intolerant — as intolerant as 
 Bloody Mary. Their attitude is really this : 
 that the man must stop thinking, if he is to go 
 on living. Their counsel is one of intellectual 
 amputation. If thy head offend thee, cut it 
 off; for it is better, not merely to enter the 
 Kingdom of Heaven as a child, but to enter 
 
 35 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 it as an imbecile, rather than with your whole 
 intellect to be cast into hell — or into Hanwell. 
 
 Such is the madman of experience ; he is 
 commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful 
 reasoner. Doubtless he could be vanquished 
 in mere reason, and the case against him put 
 logically. But it can be put much more pre- 
 cisely in more general and even aesthetic terms. 
 He is in the clean and well-lit prison of one 
 idea : he is sharpened to one painful point. 
 He is without healthy hesitation and healthy 
 complexity. Now, as I explain in the introduc- 
 tion, I have determined in these early chapters 
 to give not so much a diagram of a doctrine as 
 some pictures of a point of view. And I have 
 described at length my vision of the maniac for 
 this reason : that just as I am affected by the 
 maniac, so I am affected by most modern 
 thinkers. That unmistakable mood or note 
 that I hear from Hanwell, I hear also from half 
 the chairs of science and seats of learning to-day ; 
 and most of the mad doctors are mad doctors in 
 more senses than one. They all have exactly 
 that combination we have noted : the combina- 
 tion of an expansive and exhaustive reason with 
 a contracted common sense. They are universal 
 only in the sense that they take one thin explan- 
 ation and carry it very far. But a pattern can 
 
 36 
 
The Maniac 
 
 stretch for ever and still be a small pattern. 
 They see a chess-board white on black, and if 
 the universe is paved with it, it is still white 
 on black. Like the lunatic, they cannot alter 
 their standpoint ; they cannot make a mental 
 effort and suddenly see it black on white. 
 
 Take first the more obvious case of mate- 
 rialism. As an explanation of the world, 
 materialism has a sdrt of insane simplicity. It 
 has just the quality of the madman's argument ; 
 we have at once the sense of it covering every- 
 thing and the sense of it leaving everything out. 
 Contemplate some able and sincere materialist, 
 as, for instance, Mr. McCabe, and you will 
 have exactly this unique sensation. He under- 
 stands everything, and everything does not 
 seem worth understanding. His cosmos may 
 be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but 
 still his cosmos is smaller than our world. 
 Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of 
 the madman, seems unconscious of the alien 
 energies and the large indifference of the earth ; 
 it is not thinking of the real things of the 
 earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or 
 first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so 
 very large, and the cosmos is so very small. 
 The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a 
 man can hide his head in. 
 
 37 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 It must be understood that I am not now 
 discussing the relation of these creeds to truth ; 
 but, for the present, solely their relation to 
 health. Later in the argument I hope to attack 
 the question of objective verity ; here I speak 
 only of a phenomenon of psychology. I do 
 not for the present attempt to prove to Haeckel 
 that materialism is untrue, any more than I 
 attempted to prove to the man who thought he 
 was Christ that he was labouring under an error. 
 I merely remark here on the fact that both cases 
 have the same kind of completeness and the 
 same kind of incompleteness. You can explain 
 a man's detention at Hanwell by an indifferent 
 public by saying that it is the crucifixion of a 
 god of whom the world is not worthy. The 
 explanation does explain. Similarly you may 
 explain the order in the universe by saying that 
 all things, even the souls of men, are leaves 
 inevitably unfolding on an utterly unconscious 
 tree — the blind destiny of matter. The explan- 
 ation does explain, though not, of course, so 
 completely as the madman's. But the point 
 here is that the normal human mind not only 
 objects to both, but feels to both the same 
 objection. Its approximate statement is that 
 if the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is 
 not much of a god. And, similarly, if the 
 
 38 
 
The Maniac 
 
 cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos, it 
 is not much of a cosmos. The thing has 
 shrunk. The deity is less divine than many 
 men ; and (according to Haeckel) the whole of 
 life is something much more grey, narrow, and 
 trivial than many separate aspects of it. The 
 parts seem greater than the whole. 
 
 For we must remember that the materialist 
 philosophy (whether true or not) is certainly 
 much more limiting than any religion. In one 
 sense, of course, all intelligent ideas are narrow. 
 They cannot be broader than themselves. A 
 Christian is only restricted in the same sense 
 that an atheist is restricted. He cannot think 
 Christianity false and continue to be a Christian ; 
 and the atheist cannot think atheism false and 
 continue to be an atheist. But as it happens, 
 there is a very special sense in which materialism 
 has more restrictions than spiritualism. Mr. 
 McCabe thinks me a slave because I am not 
 allowed to believe in determinism. I think 
 Mr. McCabe a slave because he Is not allowed 
 to believe in fairies. But if we examine the 
 two vetoes we shall see that his is really much 
 more of a pure veto than mine. The Christian Is 
 quite free to believe that there is a considerable 
 amount of settled order and Inevitable develop- 
 ment in the universe. But the materialist is 
 
 39 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 not allowed to admit into his spotless machine 
 the slightest speck of spiritualism or miracle. 
 Poor Mr. McCabe is not allowed to retain even 
 the tiniest imp, though it might be hiding in a 
 pimpernel. The Christian admits that the 
 universe is manifold and even miscellaneous, 
 just as a sane man knows that he is complex. 
 The sane man knows that he has a touch of the 
 beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, 
 a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane 
 man knows that he has a touch of the mad- 
 man. But the materialist's world is quite 
 simple and solid, just as the madman is quite 
 sure he is sane. The materialist is sure that 
 history has been simply and solely a chain of 
 causation, just as the interesting person before 
 mentioned is quite sure that he is simply and 
 solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen 
 never have doubts. 
 
 Spiritual doctrines do not actually limit the 
 mind as do materialistic denials. Even if I 
 believe in immortality I need not think about 
 it. But if I disbelieve in immortality I must 
 not think about it. In the first case the road 
 is open and I can go as far as I like ; in the 
 second the road is shut. But the case is even 
 stronger, and the parallel with madness is yet 
 more strange. For it was our case against the 
 
 40 
 
The Maniac 
 
 exhaustive and logical theory of the lunatic 
 that, right or wrong, it gradually destroyed his 
 humanity. Now it is the charge against the 
 main deductions of the materialist that, right 
 or wrong, they gradually destroy his humanity ; 
 I do not mean only kindness, I mean hope, 
 courage, poetry, initiative, all that is human. 
 For instance, when materialism leads men to 
 complete fatalism (as it generally does), it is 
 quite idle to pretend that it is in any sense a 
 liberating force. It is absurd to say that you 
 are especially advancing freedom when you 
 only use free thought to destroy free will. 
 The determinists come to bind, not to loose. 
 They may well call their law the " chain " of 
 causation. It is the worst chain that ever 
 fettered a human being. You may use the 
 language of liberty, if you like, about material- 
 istic teaching, but it is obvious that this is just 
 as inapplicable to it as a whole as the same 
 language when applied to a man locked up in a 
 mad-house. You may say, if you like, that the 
 man is free to think himself a poached egg. 
 But it is surely a more massive and important 
 fact that if he is a poached egg he is not free 
 to eat, drink, sleep, walk, or smoke a cigarette. 
 Similarly you may say, if you like, that the bold 
 determinist speculator is free to disbelieve in 
 
 41 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 the reality of the will. But it is a much more 
 massive and important fact that he is not free to 
 praise, to curse, to thank, to justify, to urge, to 
 punish, to resist temptations, to incite mobs, to 
 make New Year resolutions, to pardon sinners, 
 to rebuke tyrants, or even to say " thank you " 
 for the mustard. 
 
 In passing from this subject I may note 
 that there is a queer fallacy to the effect that 
 materialistic fatalism is in some way favourable 
 to mercy, to the abolition of cruel punishments 
 or punishments of any kind. This is startlingly 
 the reverse of the truth. It is quite tenable 
 that the doctrine of necessity makes no 
 difference at all ; that it leaves the flogger 
 flogging and the kind friend exhorting as 
 before. But obviously if it stops either of 
 them it stops the kind exhortation. That the 
 sins are inevitable does not prevent punish- 
 ment ; if it prevents anything it prevents 
 persuasion. Determinism is quite as likely to 
 lead to cruelty as it is certain to lead to 
 cowardice. Determinism is not inconsistent 
 with the cruel treatment of criminals. What it 
 is (perhaps) inconsistent with is the generous 
 treatment of criminals ; with any appeal to their 
 better feelings or encouragement in their moral 
 struggle. The determinist does not believe in 
 
 42 
 
The Maniac 
 
 appealing to the will, but he does believe in 
 changing the environment. He must not say to 
 the sinner, " Go and sin no more," because the 
 sinner cannot help it. But he can put him in 
 boiling oil ; for boiling oil is an environment. 
 Considered as a figure, therefore, the materialist 
 has the fantastic outline of the figure of the 
 madman. Both take up a position at once 
 unanswerable and intolerable. 
 
 Of course it is not only of the materialist 
 that all this is true. The same would apply 
 to the other extreme of speculative logic. 
 There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who 
 believes that everything began in matter. It 
 is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that 
 everything began in himself He doubts not the 
 existence of angels or devils, but the existence 
 of men and cows. For him his own friends are 
 a mythology made up by himself. He created 
 his own father and his own mother. This 
 horrible fancy has in it something decidedly 
 attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of 
 our day. That publisher who thought that 
 men would get on if they believed in them- 
 selves, those seekers after the Superman who 
 are always looking for him in the looking-glass, 
 those writers who talk about impressing their 
 personalities instead of creating life for the 
 
 43 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 world, all these people have really only an 
 inch between them and this awful emptiness. 
 Then when this kindly world all round the 
 man has been blackened out like a lie ; when 
 friends fade into ghosts, and the foundations 
 of the world fail ; then when the man, believing 
 in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own 
 nightmare, then the great individualistic motto 
 shall be written over him in avenging irony. 
 The stars will be ordy dots in the blackness of 
 his own brain ; his mother's face will be only a 
 sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls 
 of his cell. But over his cell shall be written, 
 with dreadful truth, " He believes in himself." 
 All that concerns us here, however, is to 
 note that this panegoistic extreme of thought 
 exhibits the same paradox as the other extreme 
 of materialism. It is equally complete in theory 
 and equally crippling in practice. For the sake 
 of simplicity, it is easier to state the notion by 
 saying that a man can believe that he is always 
 in a dream. Now, obviously there can be no 
 positive proof given to him that he is not in a 
 dream, for the simple reason that no proof can 
 be offered that might not be offered in a dream. 
 But if the man began to burn down London 
 and say that his housekeeper would soon call 
 him to breakfast, we should take him and put 
 
 44 
 
The Maniac 
 
 him with other logicians in a place which has 
 often been alluded to in the course of this 
 chapter. The man who cannot believe his 
 senses, and the man who cannot believe any- 
 thing else, are both insane, but their insanity 
 is proved not by any error in their argument, 
 but by the manifest mistake of their whole 
 lives. They have both locked themselves up 
 in two boxes, painted inside with the sun and 
 stars ; they are both unable to get out, the one 
 into the health and happiness of heaven, the 
 other even into the health and happiness of 
 the earth. Their position is quite reasonable ; 
 nay, in a sense it is infinitely reasonable, just 
 as a threepenny bit is infinitely circular. But 
 there is such a thing as a mean infinity, a base 
 and slavish eternity. It is amusing to notice 
 that many of the moderns, whether sceptics or 
 mystics, have taken as their sign a certain 
 eastern symbol, which is the very symbol of 
 this ultimate nullity. When they wish to 
 represent eternity, they represent it by a 
 serpent with his tail in his mouth. There 
 is a startling sarcasm in the image of that 
 very unsatisfactory meal. The eternity of 
 the material fatalists, the eternity of the 
 eastern pessimists, the eternity of the super- 
 Qilious theosophists and higher scientists of 
 
 45 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 to-day is, indeed, very well presented by a 
 serpent eating his tail, a degraded animal who 
 destroys even himself. 
 
 This chapter is purely practical and is con- 
 cerned with what actually is the chief mark 
 and element of insanity ; we may say in 
 summary that it is reason used without root, 
 reason in the void. The man who begins to 
 think without the proper first principles goes 
 mad, the man who begins to think at the 
 wrong end. And for the rest of these pages we 
 have to try and discover what is the right end. 
 But we may ask in conclusion, if this be what 
 drives men mad, what is it that keeps them 
 sane ? By the end of this book I hope to give 
 a definite, some will think a far too definite, 
 answer. But for the moment it is possible in 
 the same solely practical manner to give a 
 general answer touching what in actual human 
 history keeps men sane. Mysticism keeps 
 men sane. As long as you have mystery you 
 have health ; when you destroy mystery you 
 create morbidity. The ordinary man has 
 always been sane because the ordinary man 
 has always been a mystic. He has permitted 
 the twilight. He has always had one foot in 
 earth and the other in fairyland. He has 
 always left himself free to doub^ his gods ; but 
 
 46 
 
The Maniac 
 
 (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to 
 believe in them. He has always cared more 
 for truth than for consistency. If he saw two 
 truths that seemed to contradict each other, 
 he would take the two truths and the con- 
 tradiction along with them. His spiritual 
 sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight : 
 he sees two different pictures at once and yet 
 sees all the better for that. Thus he has 
 always believed that there was such a thing 
 as fate, but such a thing as free will also. 
 Thus he believed that children were indeed 
 the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought 
 to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He 
 admired youth because it was young and age 
 because it was not. It is exactly this balance 
 of apparent contradictions that has been the 
 whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The 
 whole secret of mysticism is this : that man 
 can understand everything by the help of what 
 he does not understand. The morbid logician 
 seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds 
 in making everything mysterious. The mystic 
 allows one thing to be mysterious, and every- 
 thing else becomes lucid. The determinist 
 makes the theory of causation quite clear, and 
 then finds that he cannot say " if you please " 
 to the housemaid. The Christian permits 
 
 47 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 free will to remain a sacred mystery ; but 
 because of this his relations with the house- 
 maid become of a sparkling and crystal 
 clearness. He puts the seed of dogma In a 
 central darkness ; but It branches forth in all 
 directions with abounding natural health. As 
 we have taken the circle as the symbol of 
 reason and madness, we may very well take the 
 cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of 
 health. Buddhism Is centripetal, but Chris- 
 tianity Is centrifugal : it breaks out. For the 
 circle is perfect and Infinite In Its nature ; but 
 it is fixed for ever In its size ; it can never be 
 larger or smaller. But the cross, though It has 
 at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can 
 extend Its four arms for ever without altering 
 its shape. Because it has a paradox In Its 
 centre It can grow without changing. The 
 circle returns upon itself and is bound. The 
 cross opens its arms to the four winds ; It Is a 
 signpost for free travellers. 
 
 Symbols alone are of even a cloudy value In 
 speaking of this deep matter ; and another 
 symbol from physical nature will express 
 sufficiently well the real place of mysticism 
 before mankind. The one created thing which 
 we cannot look at is the one thing In the light 
 of which we look at everything. Like the sun 
 
 48 
 
The Maniac 
 
 at noonday, mysticism explains everything else 
 by the blaze of its own victorious invisibility. 
 Detached intellectualism is (in the exact sense 
 of a popular phrase) all moonshine ; for it is 
 light without heat, and it is secondary light, 
 reflected from a dead world. But the Greeks 
 were right when they made Apollo the god 
 both of imagination and of sanity ; for he was 
 both the patron of poetry and the patron of 
 healing. Of necessary dogmas and a special 
 creed 1 shall speak later. But that transcen- 
 dentalism by which all men live has primarily 
 much the position of the sun in the sky. We 
 are conscious of it as of a kind of splendid 
 confusion ; it is something both shining and 
 shapeless, at once a blaze and a blur. But the 
 circle of the moon is as clear and unmistakable, 
 as recurrent and inevitable, as the circle of 
 Euclid on a blackboard. For the moon is 
 utterly reasonable ; and the moon is the 
 mother of lunatics and has given to them all 
 her name. 
 
 49 
 
Chapter III — The Suicide of Thought 
 
 THE phrases of the street are not only 
 forcible but subtle : for a figure of 
 speech can often get into a crack 
 too small for a definition. Phrases 
 like "put out" or "oflF colour" might have 
 been coined by Mr. Henry James in an agony 
 of verbal precision. And there is no more 
 subtle truth than that of the everyday phrase 
 about a man having "his heart in the right 
 place." It involves the idea of normal propor- 
 tion ; not only does a certain function exist, 
 but it is rightly related to other functions. 
 Indeed, the negation of this phrase would 
 describe with peculiar accuracy the somewhat 
 morbid mercy and perverse tenderness of the 
 most representative moderns. If, for instance, I 
 had to describe with fairness the character of Mr. 
 Bernard Shaw, I could not express myself more 
 exactly than by saying that he has a heroically 
 large and generous heart ; but not a heart in 
 the right place. And this is so of the typical 
 society of our time. 
 
 The modern world is not evil ; in some ways 
 the modern world is far too good. It is full 
 of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious 
 
 so 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shat- 
 tered at the Reformation), it is not merely the 
 vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, 
 let loose, and they wander and do damage- 
 But the virtues are let loose also ; and the 
 virtues wander more wUdly, and the virtues 
 do more terrible damage. The modern world is 
 fuU of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The 
 virtues have gone mad because they have been 
 isolated from each other and are wandering 
 alone. Thus some scientists care for truth ; 
 and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humani- 
 tarians only care for pity ; and their pity (I am 
 sorry to say) is often untruthful. For example, 
 Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he 
 is mad on one Christian virtue : the merely 
 mystical and almost irrational virtue of charity. 
 He has a strange idea that he will make it easier 
 to forgive sins by saying that there are no sins 
 to forgive. Mr. Blatchford is not only an early 
 Christian, he is the only early Christian who 
 ought really to have been eaten by lions. For 
 in his case the pagan accusation is reaUy true : 
 his mercy would mean mere anarchy. He really 
 is the enemy of the human race — because he is 
 so human. As the other extreme, we may take 
 the acrid realist, who has deliberately killed in 
 himself all human pleasure in happy tales or in 
 
 51 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 the healing of the heart. Torquemada tortured 
 people physically for the sake of moral truth. 
 Zola tortured people morally for the sake of 
 physical truth. But in Torquemada's time 
 there was at least a system that could to some 
 extent make righteousness and peace kiss each 
 other. Now they do not even bow. But a 
 much stronger case than these two of truth and 
 pity can be found In the remarkable case of 
 the dislocation of humility. 
 
 It is only with one aspect of humility that we 
 are here concerned. Humility was largely meant 
 as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of 
 the appetite of man. He was always out- 
 stripping his mercies with his own newly 
 invented needs. His very power of enjoyment 
 destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, 
 he lost the chief pleasure ; for the chief pleasure 
 is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a 
 man would make his world large, he must be 
 always making himself small. Even the haughty 
 visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles 
 are the creations of humility. Giants that tread 
 down forests like grass are the creations of 
 humility. Towers that vanish upwards above 
 the loneliest star are the creations of humility. 
 For towers are not tall unless we look up at 
 them ; and giants are not giants unless they 
 
 52 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagi- 
 nation, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the 
 pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. 
 It is impossible without humility to enjoy any- 
 thing — even pride. 
 
 But what we sufFer from to-day is humility 
 in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from 
 the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon 
 the organ of conviction ; where it was never 
 meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful 
 about himself, but undoubting about the truth ; 
 this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the 
 part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the 
 part he ought not to assert — himself. The part 
 he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to 
 doubt — the Divine Reason. Huxley preached 
 a humility content to learn from Nature. But 
 the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if 
 he can even learn. Thus we should be wrong 
 if we had said hastily that there is no humility 
 typical of our time. The truth is that there is 
 a real humility typical of our time ; but it so 
 happens that it is practically a more poisonous 
 humility than the wildest prostrations of the 
 ascetic. The old humility was a spur that 
 prevented a man from stopping ; not a nail in 
 his boot that prevented him from going on. 
 For the old humility made a man doubtful 
 
 53 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 about his efforts, which might make him work 
 harder. But the new humility makes a man 
 doubtful about his aims, which will make him 
 stop working altogether. 
 
 At any street corner we may meet a man 
 who utters the frantic and blasphemous state- 
 ment that he may be wrong. Every day one 
 comes across somebody who says that of course 
 his view may not be the right one. Of course 
 his view must be the right one, or it is not his 
 view. We are on the road to producing a race 
 of men too mentally modest to believe in the 
 multiplication table. We are in danger of 
 seeing philosophers who doubt the law of 
 gravity as being a mere fancy of their own. 
 Scoffers of old time were too proud to be con- 
 vinced ; but these are too humble to be con- 
 vinced. The meek do inherit the earth ; but 
 the modern sceptics are too meek even to claim 
 their inheritance. It is exactly this intellectual 
 helplessness which is our second problem. 
 
 The last chapter has been concerned only 
 with a fact of observation : that what peril of 
 morbidity there is for man comes rather from 
 his reason than his imagination. It was not 
 meant to attack the authority of reason ; rather 
 it is the ultimate purpose to defend it. For 
 it needs defence. The whole modern world 
 
 54 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 is at war with reason ; and the tower already 
 reels. 
 
 The sages, it is often said, can see no answer 
 to the riddle of religion. But the trouble with 
 our sages is not that they cannot see the 
 answer ; it is that they,, cannot even see the 
 riddle. They are like children so stupid as 
 to notice nothing paradoxical in the playful 
 assertion that a door is not a door. The 
 modern latitudinarians speak, for instance, about 
 authority in religion not only as if there were 
 no reason in it, but as if there had never been 
 any reason for it. Apart from seeing its 
 philosophical basis, they cannot even see its 
 historical cause. Religious authority has often, 
 doubtless, been oppressive or unreasonable ; 
 just as every legal system (and especially our 
 present one) has been callous and full of a cruel 
 apathy. It is rational to attack the police ; nay, 
 it is glorious. But the modern critics of 
 religious authority are like men who should 
 attack the police without ever having heard of 
 burglars. For there is a great and possible 
 peril to the human mind : a peril as practical 
 as burglary. Against it religious authority was 
 reared, rightly or wrongly, as a barrier. And 
 against it something certainly must be reared as 
 a barrier, if our race is to avoid ruin. 
 
 55 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 That peril is that the human intellect is free 
 to destroy itself. Just as one generation could 
 prevent the very existence of the next generation, 
 by all entering a monastery or jumping into the 
 sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree 
 prevent further thinking by teaching the next 
 generation that there is no validity in any 
 human thought. It is idle to talk always of 
 the alternative of reason and faith. Reason is 
 itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to 
 assert that our thoughts have any relation to 
 reality at all. If you are merely a sceptic, 
 you must sooner or later ask yourself the 
 question, " Why should anything go right ; 
 even observation and deduction ? Why should 
 not good logic be as misleading as bad logic ? 
 They are both movements in the brain of a 
 bewildered ape ? " The young sceptic says, " I 
 have a right to think for myself." But the old 
 sceptic, the complete sceptic, says, " I have no 
 right to think for myself. I have no right to 
 think at all." 
 
 There is a thought that stops thought. 
 That is the only thought that ought to be 
 stopped. That is the ultimate evil against 
 which all religious authority was aimed. It 
 only appears at the end of decadent ages like 
 our own : and already Mr. H. G. Wells has 
 
 56 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 raised its ruinous banner ; he has written a 
 delicate piece of scepticism called " Doubts of 
 the Instrument." In this he questions the 
 brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality 
 from all his own assertions, past, present, and 
 to come. But it was against this remote ruin 
 that all the military systems in religion were 
 originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and 
 the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible 
 persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly 
 said, for the suppression of reason. They were 
 organized for the difficult defence of reason. 
 Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once 
 things were wildly questioned, reason could be 
 questioned first. The authority of priests to 
 absolve, the authority of popes to define the 
 authority, even of inquisitors to terrify : these 
 were aU only dark defences erected round one 
 central authority, more undemonstrable, more 
 supernatural than all — the authority of a man 
 to think. We know now that this is so ; we 
 have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can 
 hear scepticism crashing through the old ring 
 of authorities, and at the same moment we can 
 see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far 
 as religion is gone, reason is going. For they 
 are both of the same primary and authoritative 
 kind. They are both methods of proof which 
 
 57 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 cannot themselves be proved. And in the act 
 of destroying the idea of Divine authority we 
 have largely destroyed the idea of that human 
 authority by which we do a long-division sum. 
 "With a long and sustained tug we have 
 attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man ; 
 and his head has come off with it. 
 
 Lest this should be called loose assertion, it is 
 perhaps desirable, though dull, to run rapidly 
 through the chief modern fashions of thought 
 which have this effect of stopping thought itself. 
 Materialism and the view of everything as a 
 personal illusion have some such effect ; for if 
 the mind is mechanical, thought cannot be very 
 exciting, and if the cosmos is unreal, there is 
 nothing to think about. But in these cases the 
 effect is indirect and doubtful. In some cases it 
 is direct and clear ; notably in the case of what 
 is generally called evolution. 
 
 Evolution is a good example of that modern 
 intelligence which, if it destroys anything, 
 destroys itself. Evolution is either an innocent 
 scientific description of how certain earthly 
 things came about ; or, if it is anything more 
 than this, it is an attack upon thought itself. 
 If evolution destroys anything, it does not 
 destroy religion but rationalism. If evolution 
 simply means that a positive thing called an ape 
 58 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 turned very slowly into a positive thing called 
 a man, then it is stingless for the most 
 orthodox ; for a personal God might just as 
 well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, 
 like the Christian God, he were outside time. 
 But if it means anything more, it means that 
 there is no such thing as an ape to change, and 
 no such thing as a man for him to change into. 
 It means that there is no such thing as a thing. 
 At best, there is only one thing, and that is a 
 flux of everything and anything. This is an 
 attack not upon the faith, but upon the mind ; 
 you cannot think if there are no things to 
 think about. You cannot think if you are not 
 separate from the subject of thought. Descartes 
 said, " I think ; therefore I am." The philo- 
 sophic evolutionist reverses and negatives the 
 epigram. He says, " I am not ; therefore I 
 cannot think." 
 
 Then there is the opposite attack on thought : 
 that urged by Mr. H. G. Wells when he insists 
 that every separate thing is " unique," and there 
 are no categories at all. This also is merely de- 
 structive. Thinking means connecting things, 
 and stops if they cannot be connected. It need 
 hardly be said that this scepticism forbidding 
 thought necessarily forbids speech ; a man can- 
 not open his mouth without contradicting it. 
 
 59 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did some- 
 where), " All chairs are quite different," he utters 
 not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction 
 in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you 
 could not call them " all chairs." 
 
 Akin to these is the false theory of progress, 
 which maintains that we alter the test instead of 
 trying to pass the test. We often hear it said, 
 for instance, " What is right in one age is wrong 
 in another." This is quite reasonable, if it 
 means that there is a fixed aim, and that certain 
 methods attain at certain times and not at other 
 times. If women, say, desire to be elegant, it 
 may be that they are improved at one time by 
 growing fatter and at another time by growing 
 thinner. But you cannot say that they are 
 improved by ceasing to wish to be elegant and 
 beginning to wish to be oblong. If the standard 
 changes, how can there be improvement, which 
 implies a standard ? Nietzsche started a non- 
 sensical idea that men had once sought as good 
 what we now call evil ; if it were so, we could 
 not talk of surpassing or even falling short of 
 them. How can you overtake Jones if you walk 
 in the other direction .'* You cannot discuss 
 whether one people has succeeded more in 
 being miserable than another succeeded in 
 being happy. It would be like discussing 
 
 60 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 whether Milton was more puritanical than a 
 pig is fat. 
 
 It is true that a man (a silly man) might 
 make change itself his object or ideal. But as 
 an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. 
 If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his 
 own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the 
 ideal of change ; he must not begin to flirt 
 gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress 
 itself cannot progress. It is worth remark, in 
 passing, that when Tennyson, in a wild and 
 rather weak manner, welcomed the idea of 
 infinite alteration in society, he instinctively took 
 a metaphor which suggests an imprisoned 
 tedium. He wrote — 
 
 "Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves ot 
 change." 
 
 He thought of change itself as an unchangeable 
 groove ; and so it is. Change is about the 
 narrowest and hardest groove that a man can 
 get into. 
 
 The main point here, however, is that this 
 idea of a fundamental alteration in the standard 
 is one of the things that make thought about the 
 past or fiiture simply impossible. The theory 
 of a complete change of standards in human 
 history does not merely deprive us of the 
 
 6i 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 pleasure of honouring our fathers ; it deprives 
 us even of the more modern and aristocratic 
 pleasure of despising them. 
 
 This bald summary of the thought-destroying 
 forces of our time would not be complete with- 
 out some reference to pragmatism ; for though 
 T have here used and should everywhere defend 
 the pragmatlst method as a preliminary guide to 
 truth, there is an extreme application of it which 
 involves the absence of all truth whatever. My 
 meaning can be put shortly thus, I agree with 
 the pragmatists that apparent objective truth is 
 not the whole matter ; that there is an authorita- 
 tive need to believe the things that are necessary 
 to the human mind. But I say that one of those 
 necessities precisely is a belief in objective truth. 
 The pragmatist tells a man to think what he 
 must think and never mind the Absolute. But 
 precisely one of the things that he must think 
 is the Absolute. This philosophy, indeed, is 
 a kind of verbal paradox. Pragmatism is a 
 matter of human needs ; and one of the first of 
 human needs is to be something more than a 
 pragmatist. Extreme pragmatism is just as 
 inhuman as the determinism it so powerfully 
 attacks. The determinist (who, to do him 
 justice, does not pretend to be a human being) 
 makes nonsense of the human sense of actual 
 62 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 choice. The pragmatist, who professes to be 
 specially human, makes nonsense of the human 
 sense of actual fact. 
 
 To sum up our contention so far, we may 
 say that the most characteristic current philo- 
 sophies have not only a touch of mania, but a 
 touch of suicidal mania. The mere questioner 
 has knocked his head against the limits of 
 human thought ; and cracked it. This is what 
 makes so futile the warnings of the orthodox 
 and the boasts of the advanced about the 
 dangerous boyhood of free thought. What we 
 are looking at is not the boyhood of free 
 thought ; it is the old age and ultimate dissolu- 
 tion of free thought. It is vain for bishops 
 and pious bigwigs to discuss what dreadful 
 things will happen if wild scepticism runs its 
 course. It has run its course. It is vain for 
 eloquent atheists to talk of the great truths 
 that will be revealed if once we see free thought 
 begin. We have seen it end. It has no more 
 questions to ask ; it has questioned itself. 
 You cannot call up any wilder vision than a 
 city in which men ask themselves if they have 
 any selves. You cannot fancy a more sceptical 
 world than that in which men doubt if there is 
 a world. It might certainly have reached its 
 bankruptcy more quickly and cleanly if it had 
 
 63 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 not been feebly hampered by the application of 
 indefensible laws of blasphemy or by the absurd 
 pretence that modern England is Christian. 
 But it would have reached the bankruptcy 
 anyhow. Militant atheists are still unjusdy 
 persecuted ; but rather because they are an old 
 minority than because they are a new one. 
 Free thought has exhausted its own freedom. 
 It is weary of its own success. If any eager 
 freethinker now hails philosophic freedom as 
 the dawn, he is only like the man in Mark 
 Twain who came out wrapped in blankets to 
 see the sun rise and was just in time to see it 
 set. If any frightened curate still says that it 
 will be awful if the darkness of free thought 
 should spread, we can only answer him in the 
 high and powerful words of Mr. Belloc, " Do 
 not, I beseech you, be troubled about the 
 increase of forces already in dissolution. You 
 have mistaken the hour of the night : it is 
 already morning." We have no more questions 
 left to ask. We have looked for questions in 
 the darkest corners and on the wildest peaks. 
 We have found all the questions that can be 
 found. It is time we gave up looking for 
 questions and began looking for answers. 
 
 But one more word must be added. At the 
 beginning of this preliminary negative sketch 
 
 64 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 I said that our mental ruin has been wrought 
 by wild reason, not by wild imagination. A 
 man does not go mad because he makes a 
 statue a mile high, but he may go mad by 
 thinking it out in square inches. Now, one 
 school of thinkers has seen this and jumped at 
 it as a way of renewing the pagan health of the 
 world. They see that reason destroys ; but 
 Will, they say, creates. The ultimate authority, 
 they say, is in will, not in reason. The 
 supreme point is not why a man demands a 
 thing, but the fact that he does demand it. I 
 have no space to trace or expound this philo- 
 sophy of Will. It came, I suppose, through 
 Nietzsche, who preached something that is 
 called egoism. That, indeed, was simple- 
 minded enough ; for Nietzsche denied egoism 
 simply by preaching it. To preach anything 
 is to give it away. First, the egoist calls life 
 a war without mercy, and then he takes the 
 greatest possible trouble to drill his enemies 
 in war. To preach egoism is to practise 
 altruism. But however it began, the view is 
 common enough in current literature. The 
 main defence of these thinkers is that they are 
 not thinkers ; they are makers. They say that 
 choice is itself the divine thing. Thus Mr. 
 Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that 
 
 6s E 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 men's acts are to be judged by the standard of 
 the desire of happiness. He says that a man 
 does not act for his happiness, but from his 
 will. He does not say, "Jam will make me 
 happy," but " I want jam." And in all this 
 others follow him with yet greater enthusiasm. 
 Mr. John Davidson, a remarkable poet, is so 
 passionately excited about it that he is obliged 
 to write prose. He publishes a short play with 
 several long prefaces. This is natural enough 
 in Mr. Shaw, for all his plays are prefaces : 
 Mr. Shaw is (I suspect) the only man on 
 earth who has never written any poetry. But 
 that Mr. Davidson (who can write excellent 
 poetry) should write instead laborious meta- 
 physics in defence of this doctrine of will, 
 does show that the doctrine of will has taken 
 hold of men. Even Mr. H. G. Wells has half 
 spoken in its language ; saying that one should 
 test acts not like a thinker, but like an artist, 
 saying, " I feel this curve is right," or " that 
 line shall go thus." They are all excited ; and 
 well they may be. For by this doctrine of 
 the divine authority of will, they think they 
 can break out of the doomed fortress of 
 rationalism. They think they can escape. 
 
 But they cannot escape. This pure praise 
 of volition ends in the same break up and blank 
 
 66 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 as the mere pursuit of logic. Exactly as com- 
 plete free thought involves the doubting of 
 thought itself, so the acceptation of mere 
 "willing" really paralyzes the will. Mr. 
 Bernard Shaw has not perceived the real differ- 
 ence between the old utilitarian test of pleasure 
 (clumsy, of course, and easily misstated) and 
 that which he propounds. The real difference 
 between the test of happiness and the test of 
 will is simply that the test of happiness is a 
 test and the other isn't. You can discuss 
 whether a man's act in jumping over a cliff 
 was directed towards happiness ; you cannot 
 discuss whether it was derived from will. Of 
 course it was. You can praise an action by 
 saying that it is calculated to bring pleasure 
 or pain to discover truth or to save the soul. 
 But you cannot praise an action because it shows 
 wiU ; for to say that is merely to say that it 
 is an action. By this praise of will you cannot 
 really choose one course as better than another. 
 And yet choosing one course as better than 
 another is the very definition of the will you 
 are praising. 
 
 The worship of will is the negation of will. 
 To admire mere choice is to refuse to choose. 
 If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and 
 says, " Will something," that is tantamount to 
 
 67 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 saying, " I do not mind what you will," and 
 that is tantamount to saying, " I have no will 
 in the matter." You cannot admire will in 
 general, because the essence of will is that it is 
 particular. A brilliant anarchist like Mr. John 
 Davidson feels an irritation against ordinary 
 morality, and therefore he invokes will — will to 
 anything. He only wants humanity to want 
 something. But humanity does want some- 
 thing. It wants ordinary morality. He rebels 
 against the law and tells us to will something 
 or anything. But we have willed something. 
 We have willed the law against which he 
 rebels. 
 
 All the will-worshippers, from Nietzsche to 
 Mr. Davidson, are really quite empty of 
 volition. They cannot will, they can hardly 
 wish. And if any one wants a proof of this, it 
 can be found quite easily. It can be found in 
 this fact : that they always talk of will as some- 
 thing that expands and breaks out. But it is 
 quite the opposite. Every act of will is an act 
 of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire 
 limitation. In that sense every act is an act 
 of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, 
 you reject everything else. That objection, 
 which men of this school used to make to the 
 act of marriage, is really an objection to every 
 
 68 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 act. Every act is an irrevocable selection and 
 exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman 
 you give up all the others, so when you take 
 one course of action you give up all the other 
 courses. If you become King of England, you 
 give up the post of Beadle in Brompton. If 
 you go to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive 
 life in Wimbledon. It is the existence of this 
 negative or limiting side of will that makes 
 most of the talk of the anarchic will- worshippers 
 little better than nonsense. For instance, Mr. 
 John Davidson tells us to have nothing to do 
 with "Thou shalt not"; but it is surely 
 obvious that " Thou shalt not " is only one of 
 the necessary corollaries of " I will." " I will go 
 to the Lord Mayor's Show, and thou shalt not 
 stop me." Anarchism adjures us to be bold 
 creative artists, and care for no laws or limits. 
 But it is impossible to be an artist and not 
 care for laws and limits. Art is limitation ; the 
 essence of every picture is the frame. If you 
 draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long 
 neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold 
 yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, 
 you will really find that you are not free to 
 draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the 
 world of facts, you step into a world of limits. 
 You can free things from alien or accidental 
 
 69 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. 
 You may, if you like, free a tiger from his 
 bars ; but do not free him from his stripes. 
 Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump : 
 you may be freeing him from being a camel. 
 Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging 
 triangles to break out of the prison of their 
 three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its 
 three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. 
 Somebody wrote a work called " The Loves of 
 the Triangles " ; I never read it, but I am sure 
 that if triangles ever were loved, they were 
 loved for being triangular. This is certainly 
 the case with all artistic creation, which is in 
 some ways the most decisive example of pure 
 will. The artist loves his limitations : they 
 constitute the thing he is doing. The painter 
 is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is 
 glad that the clay is colourless. 
 
 In case the point is not clear, an historic example 
 may illustrate it. The French Revolution was 
 really an heroic and decisive thing, because the 
 Jacobins willed something definite and limited. 
 They desired the freedoms of democracy, but 
 also all the vetoes of democracy. They wished 
 to have votes and not to have titles. Republi- 
 canism had an ascetic side in Franklin or 
 Robespierre as well as an expansive side in 
 
 70 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 Danton or "Wilkes. Therefore they have 
 created something with a solid substance and 
 shape, the square social equality and peasant 
 wealth of France. But since then the revolu- 
 tionary or speculative mind of Europe has been 
 weakened by shrinking from any proposal 
 because of the limits of that proposal. Liberal- 
 ism has been degraded into liberality. Men 
 have tried to turn "revolutionise" from a 
 transitive to an intransitive verb. The 
 Jacobin could tell you not only the system 
 he would rebel against, but (what was more 
 important) the system he would noi rebel 
 against, the system he would trust. But the new 
 rebel is a sceptic, and will not entirely trust 
 anything. He has no loyalty ; therefore he can 
 never be really a revolutionist. And the fact 
 that he doubts everything really gets in his way 
 when he wants to denounce anything. For all 
 denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some 
 kind ; and the modern revolutionist doubts not 
 only the institution he denounces, but the 
 doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he 
 writes one book complaining that imperial 
 oppression insults the purity of women, and then 
 he writes another book (about the sex problem) 
 in which he insults it himself. He curses 
 the Sultan because Christian girls lose their 
 
 71 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because 
 they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out 
 that war is a waste of life, and then, as a 
 philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A 
 Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for 
 killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest 
 philosophical principles that the peasant ought 
 to have killed himself. A man denounces 
 marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic 
 profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a 
 flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of 
 Poland or Ireland because they take away that 
 bauble. The man of this school goes first to 
 a political meeting, where he complains that 
 savages are treated as if they were beasts ; then 
 he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to 
 a scientific meeting, where he proves that they 
 practically are beasts. In short, the modern 
 revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always 
 engaged in undermining his own mines. In his 
 book on politics he attacks men for trampling 
 on morality ; in his book on ethics he attacks 
 morality for trampling on men. Therefore the 
 modern man in revolt has become practically 
 useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling 
 against everything he has lost his right to rebel 
 against anything. 
 
 It may be added that the same blank and 
 72 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 bankruptcy can be observed in all fierce and 
 terrible types of literature, especially in satire. 
 Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it pre- 
 supposes an admitted superiority in certain 
 things over others ; it presupposes a standard. 
 When little boys in the street laugh at the 
 fatness of some distinguished journalist, they are 
 unconsciously assuming a standard of Greek 
 sculpture. They are appealing to the marble 
 Apollo. And the curious disappearance of 
 satire from our literature is an instance of the 
 fierce things fading for want of any principle to 
 be fierce about. Nietzsche had some natural 
 talent for sarcasm : he could sneer, though he 
 could not laugh ; but there is always something 
 bodiless and without weight in his satire, simply 
 because it has not any mass of common morality 
 behind it. He is himself more preposterous 
 than anything he denounces. But, indeed, 
 Nietzsche will stand very well as the type of the 
 whole of this failure of abstract violence. The 
 softening of the brain which ultimately overtook 
 him was not a physical accident. If Nietzsche 
 had not ended in imbecility, Nietzscheism would 
 end in imbecility. Thinking in isolation and 
 with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man 
 who will not have softening of the heart must 
 at last have softening of the brain. 
 
 73 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 This last attempt to evade intellectualism 
 ends in intellectualism, and therefore in death. 
 The sortie has failed. The wild worship of 
 lawlessness and the materialist worship of law 
 end in the same void. Nietzsche scales stag- 
 gering mountains, but he turns up ultimately 
 in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the 
 land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both 
 helpless — one because he must not grasp any- 
 thing, and the other because he must not let 
 go of anything. The Tolstoyan's will is frozen 
 by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions 
 are evil. But the Nietzscheite's will is quite 
 equally frozen by his view that all special 
 actions are good ; for if all special actions are 
 good, none of them are special. They stand 
 at the cross-roads, and one hates all the roads 
 and the other likes all the roads. The result is 
 — well, some things are not hard to calculate. 
 They stand at the cross-roads. 
 
 Here I end (thank God) the first and 
 dullest business of this book — the rough review 
 of recent thought. After this I begin to sketch 
 a view of life which may not interest my 
 reader, but which, at any rate, interests me. 
 In front of me, as I close this page, is a pile of 
 modern books that I have been turning over 
 for the purpose — a pile of ingenuity, a pile of 
 
 74 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 futility. By the accident of my present de- 
 tachment, I can see the inevitable smash of the 
 philosophies of Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, 
 Nietzsche and Shaw, as clearly as an Inevitable 
 railway smash could be seen from a balloon. 
 They are all on the road to the emptiness of 
 the asylum. For madness may be defined as 
 using mental activity so as to reach mental 
 helplessness ; and they have nearly reached it. 
 He who thinks he is made of glass, thinks to 
 the destruction of thought ; for glass cannot 
 think. So he who wills to reject nothing, wills 
 the destruction of will ; for will is not only 
 the choice of something, but the rejection of 
 almost everything. And as I turn and tumble 
 over the clever, wonderful, tiresome, and use- 
 less modern books, the title of one of them 
 rivets my eye. It is called "Jeanne d'Arc," 
 by Anatole France. I have only glanced at 
 it, but a glance was enough to remind me 
 of Renan's " Vie de J^sus." It has the same 
 strange method of the reverent sceptic. It 
 discredits supernatural stories that have some 
 foundation, simply by telling natural stories 
 that have no foundation. Because we cannot 
 believe in what a saint did, we are to pretend 
 that we know exactly what he felt. But I do 
 not mention either book in order to criticise it, 
 
 75 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 but because the accidental combination of the 
 names called up two startling images of sanity 
 which blasted all the books before me. Joan 
 of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either 
 by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by 
 accepting them all like Nietzsche, She chose 
 a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. 
 Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in 
 her all that was true either in Tolstoy or 
 Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of 
 them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, 
 the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain 
 pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence 
 for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. 
 Joan of Arc had all that and with this great 
 addition, that she endured poverty as well as 
 admiring it ; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical 
 aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And 
 then I thought of all that was brave and proud 
 and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny 
 against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I 
 thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of 
 danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, 
 his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, 
 and again with this difference, that she did not 
 praise fighting, but fought. We know that she 
 was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for 
 all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy 
 
 76 
 
The Suicide of Thought 
 
 only praised the peasant ; she was the peasant. 
 Nietzsche only praised the warrior ; she was the 
 warrior. She beat them both at their own antago- 
 nistic ideals ; she was more gentle than the one, 
 more violent than the other. Yet she was a per- 
 fectly practical person who did something, while 
 they are wild speculators who do nothing. It 
 was impossible that the thought should not cross 
 my mind that she and her faith had perhaps 
 some secret of moral unity and utility that has 
 been lost. And with that thought came a 
 larger one, and the colossal figure of her Master 
 had also crossed the theatre of my thoughts. 
 The same modern difficulty which darkened 
 the subject - matter of Anatole France also 
 darkened that of Ernest Renan, Renan also 
 divided his hero's pity from his hero's pugna- 
 cityj- Renan even represented the righteous 
 anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous break- 
 down after the idyllic expectations of Galilee. 
 As if there were any inconsistency between 
 having a love for humanity and having a hatred 
 for inhumanity ! Altruists, with thin, weak 
 voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists 
 (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce 
 Him as an altruist. In our present atmosphere 
 such cavils are comprehensible enough. The 
 love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred 
 
 77 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 of a tyrant. The hatred of a hero is more 
 generous than the love of a philanthropist. 
 There is a huge and heroic sanity of which 
 moderns can only collect the fragments. There 
 is a giant of whom we see only the lopped 
 arms and legs walking about. They have torn 
 the soul of Christ into silly strips, labelled 
 egoism and altruism, and they are equally 
 puzzled by His insane magnificence and His 
 insane meekness. They have parted His gar- 
 ments among them, and for His vesture they 
 have cast lots ; though the coat was without 
 seam woven from the top throughout. 
 
 78 
 
Chapter IV — The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 WHEN the business man rebukes 
 the idealism of his office-boy, it 
 is commonly in some such speech 
 as this : "Ah, yes, when one is 
 young, one has these ideals in the abstract and 
 these castles in the air ; but in middle age they 
 all break up like clouds, and one comes down 
 to a belief in practical politics, to using the 
 machinery one has and getting on with the 
 world as it is." Thus, at least, venerable and 
 philanthropic old men now in their honoured 
 graves used to talk to me when I was a boy. 
 But since then I have grown up and have dis- 
 covered that these philanthropic old men were 
 telling lies. What has really happened is 
 exactly the opposite of what they said would 
 happen. They said that I should lose my ideals 
 and begin to believe in the methods of practical 
 politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in 
 the least ; my faith in fundamentals is exactly 
 what it always was. What I have lost is my 
 old childlike faith in practical politics. I am 
 still as much concerned as ever about the Battle 
 of Armageddon ; but I am not so much con- 
 cerned about the General Election. As a babe 
 
 79 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 I leapt up on my mother's knee at the mere 
 mention of it. No ; the vision is always solid 
 and reliable. The vision is always a fact. It is 
 the reality that is often a fraud. As much as I 
 ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in 
 Liberalism. But there was a rosy ti.ne of 
 innocence when I believed in Liberals. 
 
 I take this instance of one of the enduring 
 faiths because, having now to trace the roots of 
 my personal speculation, this may be counted, I 
 think, as the only positive bias. I was brought 
 up a Liberal, and have always believed in demo- 
 cracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a 
 self-governing humanity. If any one finds the 
 phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause 
 for a moment to explain that the principle of 
 democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two 
 propositions. The first is this : that the things 
 common to all men are more important than 
 the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary 
 things are more valuable than extraordinary 
 things ; nay, they are more extraordinary. 
 Man is something more awful than men ; 
 something more strange. The sense of the 
 miracle of humanity itself should be always 
 more vivid to us than any marvels of power, 
 intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man 
 on two legs, as such, should be felt as 
 
 80 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 something more heart-breaking than any music 
 and more startling than any caricature. Death is 
 more tragic even than death by starvation. 
 Having a nose is more comic even than having 
 a Norman nose. 
 
 This is the first principle of democracy : that 
 the essential things in men are the things they 
 hold in common, not the things they hold 
 separately. And the second principle is merely 
 this : that the political instinct or desire is one 
 of these things which they hold in common. 
 Falling in love is more poetical than dropping 
 into poetry. The democratic contention is that 
 government (helping to rule the tribe) is a 
 thing like falling in love, and not a thing like 
 dropping into poetry. It is not something 
 analogous to playing the church organ, painting 
 on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that 
 insidious habit), looping the loop, being 
 Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things 
 we do not wish a man to do at all unless he 
 does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing 
 analogous to writing one's own love-letters or 
 blowing one's own nose. These things we 
 want a man to do for himself, even if he does 
 them badly. I am not here arguing the truth 
 of any of these conceptions ; I know that some 
 moderns are asking to have their wives chosen 
 
 8l . F 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for 
 all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses, 
 I merely say that mankind does recognize 
 these universal human functions, and that 
 democracy classes government among them. 
 In short, the democratic faith is this : that the 
 most terribly important things must be left to 
 ordinary men themselves — the mating of the 
 sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the 
 state. This is democracy ; and in this I have 
 always believed. 
 
 But there is one thing that I have never 
 from my youth up been able to understand. I 
 have never been able to understand where people 
 got the idea that democracy was in some way 
 opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tra- 
 dition is only democracy extended through 
 time. It is trusting to a consensus of common 
 human voices rather than to some isolated or 
 arbitrary record. The man who quotes some 
 German historian against the tradition of the 
 Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appeal- 
 ing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the 
 superiority of one expert against the awful 
 authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why 
 a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more 
 respectfully than a book of history. The legend 
 is generally made by the majority of people ii; 
 
 82 
 
Tlie Ethics of Elfland 
 
 the village, who are sane. The book is generally 
 written by the one man in the village who is mad. 
 Those who urge against tradition that men in 
 the past were ignorant may go and urge it at 
 the Carlton Club, along with the statement that 
 voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not 
 do for us. If we attach great importance to 
 the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity 
 when we are dealing with daily matters, there 
 is no reason why we should disregard it when 
 we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition 
 may be defined as an extension of the franchise. 
 Tradition means giving votes to the most 
 obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the 
 democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to 
 submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of 
 those who merely happen to be walking about. 
 All democrats object to men being disqualified 
 by the accident of birth ; tradition objects to 
 their being disqualified by the accident of 
 death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a 
 good man's opinion, even if he is our groom ; 
 tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's 
 opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, 
 cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and 
 tradition ; it seems evident to me that they are 
 the same idea. We will have the dead at our 
 councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones ; 
 
 83 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite 
 regular and official, for most tombstones, like 
 most ballot papers, are marked with a cross. 
 
 I have first to say, therefore, that if I have 
 had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of 
 democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before 
 we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings 
 I am content to allow for that personal equation ; 
 I have always been more inclined to believe the 
 ruck of hard-working people than to believe that 
 special and troublesome literary class to which 
 I belong. I prefer even the fancies and pre- 
 judices of the people who see life from the 
 inside to the clearest demonstrations of the 
 people who see life from the outside. I would 
 always trust the old wives' fables against the 
 old maids' facts. As long as wit is mother wit 
 it can be as wild as it pleases. 
 
 Now, I have to put together a general 
 position, and I pretend to no training in 
 such things. I propose to do it, therefore, 
 by writing down one after another the three 
 or four fundamental ideas which I have found 
 for myself, pretty much in the way that I 
 found them. Then I shall roughly synthesise 
 them, summing up my personal philosophy or 
 natural religion ; then I shall describe my 
 startling discovery that the whole thing had 
 
 84 
 
The Ethics of Elfiand 
 
 been discovered before. It had been dis- 
 covered by Christianity. But of these pro- 
 found persuasions which I have to recount in 
 order, the earliest was concerned with this 
 element of popular tradition. And without 
 the foregoing explanation touching tradition 
 and democracy I could hardly make my mental 
 experience clear. As it is, I do not know 
 whether I can make it clear, but I now propose 
 to try. 
 
 My first and last philosophy, that which I 
 believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in 
 the nursery. I generally learnt it from a nurse ; 
 that is, from the solemn and star-appointed 
 priestess at once of democracy and tradition. 
 The things I believed most then, the things I 
 believe most now, are the things called fairy 
 tales. They seem to me to be the entirely 
 reasonable things. They are not fantasies : 
 compared with them other things are fantastic. 
 Compared with them religion and rationalism 
 are both abnormal, though religion is abnormally 
 right and rationalism abnormally wrong. 
 Fairyland is nothing but the sunny country of 
 common sense. It is not earth that judges 
 heaven, but heaven that judges earth ; so for 
 me at least it was not earth that criticised 
 elfland, but elfland that criticised the earth. 
 
 85 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted 
 beans ; I was sure of the Man in the Moon 
 before I was certain of the moon. This was at 
 one with all popular tradition. Modern minor 
 poets are naturalists, and talk about the bush 
 or the brook ; but the singers of the old epics 
 and fables were supernaturalists, and talked 
 about the gods of brook and bush. That is 
 what the moderns mean when they say that the 
 ancients did not " appreciate Nature," because 
 they said that Nature was divine. Old nurses 
 do not tell children about the grass, but about 
 the fairies that dance on the grass ; and the old 
 Greeks could not see the trees for the dryads. 
 
 But I deal here with what ethic and philo- 
 sophy come from being fed on fairy tales. If 
 I were describing them In detail I could note 
 many noble and healthy principles that arise 
 from them. There is the chivalrous lesson of 
 " Jack the Giant Killer " ; that giants should 
 be killed because they are gigantic. It is a 
 manly mutiny against pride as such. For the 
 rebel is older than all the kingdoms, and the 
 Jacobin has more tradition than the Jacobite. 
 There is the lesson of " Cinderella," which is 
 the same as that of the Magnificat — exaltavit 
 humiles. There Is the great lesson of " Beauty 
 and the Beast " ; that a thing must be loved 
 
 86 
 
Tlie Ethics of Elfland 
 
 before it is loveable. There is the terrible 
 allegory of the " Sleeping Beauty," which tells 
 how the human creature was blessed with all 
 birthday gifts, yet cursed with death ; and how 
 death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep. 
 But I am not concerned with any of the 
 separate statutes of elfland, but with the whole 
 spirit of its law, which I learnt before I could 
 speak, and shall retain when I cannot write. 
 I am concerned with a certain way of looking 
 at life, which was created in me by the fairy 
 tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the 
 mere facts. 
 
 It might be stated this way. There are 
 certain sequences or developments (cases of one 
 thing following another), which are, in the true 
 sense of the word, reasonable. They are, in 
 the true sense of the word, necessary. Such 
 are mathematical and merely logical sequences. 
 We in fairyland (who are the most reasonable 
 of all creatures) admit that reason and that 
 necessity. For instance, if the Ugly Sisters are 
 older than Cinderella, it is (in an iron and 
 awful sense) necessary that Cinderella is younger 
 than the Ugly Sisters. There is no getting 
 out of it. Haeckel may talk as much fatalism 
 about that fact as he pleases : it really must be. 
 If Jack is the son of a miller, a miller is the 
 
 87 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 father of Jack. Cold reason decrees it from 
 her awful throne : and we in fairyland submit. 
 If the three brothers all ride horses, there are 
 six animals and eighteen legs involved : that is 
 true rationalism, and fairyland is full of it. 
 But as I put my head over the hedge of the 
 elves and began to take notice of the natural 
 world, I observed an extraordinary thing. I 
 observed that learned men in spectacles were 
 talking of the actual things that happened — 
 dawn and death and so on — as if they were 
 rational and inevitable. They talked as if the 
 fact that trees bear fruit were just as necessary 
 as the fact that two and one trees make three. 
 But it is not. There is an enormous difference 
 by the test of fairyland ; which is the test of 
 the imagination. You cannot imagine two and 
 one not making three. But you can easily 
 imagine trees not growing fruit ; you can 
 imagine them growing golden candlesticks or 
 tigers hanging on by the tail. These men in 
 spectacles spoke much of a man named Newton, 
 who was hit by an apple, and who discovered a 
 law. But they could not be got to see the dis- 
 tinction between a true law, a law of reason, 
 and the mere fact of apples falling. If the 
 apple hit Newton's nose, Newton's nose hit the 
 apple. That is a true necessity : because we 
 
 88 
 
The Ethics of Elfiand 
 
 cannot conceive the one occurring without the 
 other. But we can quite well conceive the 
 apple not falling on his nose ; we can fancy it 
 flying ardently through the air to hit some 
 other nose, of which it had a more definite dis- 
 like. "We have always in our fairy tales kept 
 this sharp distinction between the science of 
 mental relations, in which there really are laws, 
 and the science of physical facts, in which there 
 are no laws, but only weird repetitions. We 
 believe in bodily miracles, but not in mental 
 impossibilities. We believe that a Bean-stalk 
 climbed up to Heaven ; but that does not at 
 all confuse our convictions on the philosophical 
 question of how many beans make five. 
 
 Here is the peculiar perfection of tone and 
 truth in the nursery tales. The man of science 
 says, " Cut the stalk, and the apple will fall " ; 
 but he says it calmly, as if the one idea really 
 led up to the other. The witch in the fairy 
 tale says, " Blow the horn, and the ogre's castle 
 will fall " ; but she does not say it as if it were 
 something in which the effect obviously arose 
 out of the cause. Doubtless she has given the 
 advice to many champions, and has seen many 
 castles fall, but she does not lose either her 
 wonder or her reason. She does not muddle 
 her head until it imagines a necessary mental 
 
 89 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 connection between a horn and a falling tower. 
 But the scientific men do muddle their heads, 
 until they imagine a necessary mental con- 
 nection between an apple leaving the tree and 
 an apple reaching the ground. They do really 
 talk as if they had found not only a set of 
 marvellous facts, but a truth connecting those 
 facts. They do talk as if the connection of 
 two strange things physically connected them 
 philosophically. They feel that because one 
 incomprehensible thing constantly follows an- 
 other incomprehensible thing the two together 
 somehow make up a comprehensible thing. 
 Two black riddles make a white answer. 
 
 In fairyland we avoid the word "law " ; but 
 in the land of science they are singularly fond 
 of it. Thus they will call some interesting 
 conjecture about how forgotten folks pro- 
 nounced the alphabet, Grimm's Law. But 
 Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than 
 Grimm's Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any 
 rate, certainly tales ; while the law is not a 
 law. A law implies that we know the nature 
 of the generalisation and enactment ; not 
 merely that we have noticed some of the 
 effects. If there is a law that pick-pockets 
 shall go to prison, it implies that there is an 
 imaginable mental connection between the idea 
 
 90 
 
The Ethics of Elfiand 
 
 of prison and the idea of picking pockets. 
 And we know what the idea is. We can say 
 why we take liberty from a man who takes 
 liberties. But we cannot say why an egg can 
 turn into a chicken any more than we can say 
 why a bear could turn into a fairy prince. As 
 ideas, the egg and the chicken are further off 
 each other than the bear and the prince ; for 
 no egg in itself suggests a chicken, whereas 
 some princes do suggest bears. Granted, then, 
 that certain transformations do happen, it is 
 essential that we should regard them in the 
 philosophic manner of fairy tales, not in the 
 unphilosophic manner of science and the " Laws 
 of Nature." When we are asked why eggs turn 
 to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer 
 exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if 
 Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses 
 or her clothes fell from her at twelve o'clock. 
 We must answer that it is magic. It is not a 
 "law," for we do not understand its general 
 formula. It is not a necessity, for though we 
 can count on it happening practically, we have 
 no right to say that it must always happen. It 
 is no argument for unalterable law (as Huxley 
 fancied) that we count on the ordinary course 
 of things. We do not count on it ; we bet 
 on it. We risk the remote possibility of a 
 
 91 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 miracle as we do that of a poisoned pancake 
 or a world-destroying comet. We leave it out 
 of account, not because it is a miracle, and 
 therefore an impossibility, but because it is a 
 miracle, and therefore an exception. All the 
 terms used in the science books, " law," 
 " necessity," " order," " tendency," and so on, 
 are really unintellectual, because they assume 
 an inner synthesis which we do not possess. 
 The only words that ever satisfied me as 
 describing Nature are the terms used in the 
 fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment." 
 They express the arbitrariness of the fact and 
 its mystery. A tree grows fruit because It is 
 a magic tree. Water runs downhill because 
 it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is 
 bewitched. 
 
 I deny altogether that this is fantastic or 
 even mystical. We may have some mysticism 
 later on ; but this fairy-tale language about 
 things is simply rational and agnostic. It Is 
 the only way I can express in words my clear 
 and definite perception that one thing is quite 
 distinct from another ; that there is no logical 
 connection between flying and laying eggs. 
 It is the man who talks about " a law " 
 that he has never seen who is the mystic. 
 Nay, the ordinary scientific man is strictly a 
 
 92 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this 
 essential sense, that he is soaked and swept 
 away by mere associations. He has so often 
 seen birds fly and lay eggs that he feels as if 
 there must be some dreamy, tender connection 
 between the two ideas, whereas there is none. 
 A forlorn lover might be unable to dissociate 
 the moon from lost love ; so the materialist is 
 unable to dissociate the moon from the tide. 
 In both cases there is no connection, except 
 that one has seen them together. A senti- 
 mentalist might shed tears at the smell of 
 apple-blossom, because, by a dark association 
 of his own, it reminded him of his boyhood. 
 So the materialist professor (though he conceals 
 his tears) is yet a sentimentalist, because, by a 
 dark association of his own, apple-blossoms 
 remind him of apples. But the cool rationalist 
 from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, 
 the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips ; 
 it sometimes does in his country. 
 
 This elementary wonder, however, is not a 
 mere fancy derived from the fairy tales ; on 
 the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is 
 derived from this. Just as we all like love 
 tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all 
 like astonishing tales because they touch the 
 nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. 
 
 93 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 This is proved by the fact that when we are 
 very young children we do not need fairy 
 tales : we only need tales. Mere life is 
 interesting enough. A child of seven is 
 excited by being told that Tommy opened a 
 door and saw a dragon. But a child of three 
 is excited by being told that Tommy opened a 
 door. Boys like romantic tales ; but babies 
 like realistic tales — because they find them 
 romantic. In fact, a baby is about the only 
 person, I should think, to whom a modern 
 realistic novel could be read without boring 
 him. This proves that even nursery tales only 
 echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and 
 amazement. These tales say that apples were 
 golden only to refresh the forgotten moment 
 when we found that they were green. They 
 make rivers run with wine only to make us 
 remember, for one wild moment, that they run 
 with water. I have said that this is wholly 
 reasonable and even agnostic. And, indeed, 
 on this point I am all for the higher agnosti- 
 cism ; its better name is Ignorance. We have 
 all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all 
 romances, the story of the man who has 
 forgotten his name. This man walks about 
 the streets and can see and appreciate every- 
 thing ; only he cannot remember who he is. 
 
 94 
 
The Ethics of Elflmd 
 
 Well, every man is that man in the story. 
 Every man has forgotten who he is. One 
 may understand the cosmos, but never the 
 ego ; the self is more distant than any star. 
 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God ; but thou 
 shalt not know thyself. We are all under the 
 same mental calamity ; we have all forgotten 
 our names. We have all forgotten what we 
 really are. All that we call common sense 
 and rationality and practicality and positivism 
 only means that for certain dead levels of our 
 life we forget that we have forgotten. All 
 that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only 
 means that for one awful instant we remember 
 that we forget. 
 
 But though (like the man without memory 
 in the novel) we walk the streets with a sort of 
 half-witted admiration, still it is admiration. It 
 is admiration in English and not only admiration 
 in Latin. The wonder has a positive element 
 of praise. This is the next milestone to be 
 definitely marked on our road through fairy- 
 land. I shall speak in the next chapter about 
 optimists and pessimists in their intellectual 
 aspect, so far as they have one. Here I am 
 only trying to describe the enormous emotions 
 which cannot be described. And the strongest 
 ^motion was that life was as precious as 
 
 95 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 it was puzzling. It was an ecstacy because 
 it was an adventure ; it was an adventure 
 because it was an opportunity. The goodness 
 of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact 
 that there might be more dragons than 
 princesses ; it was good to be in a fairy tale. 
 The test of all happiness is gratitude ; and I 
 felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. 
 Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts 
 in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. 
 Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when 
 he put in my stockings the gift of two 
 miraculous legs ? We thank people for birth- 
 day presents of cigars and slippers. Can 
 I thank no one for the birthday present of 
 birth } 
 
 There were, then, these two first feelings, 
 indefensible and indisputable. The world was 
 a shock, but it was not merely shocking ; 
 existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant 
 surprise. In fact, all my first views were 
 exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my 
 brain from boyhood. The question was, 
 " What did the first frog say ? " And the 
 answer was, " Lord, how you made me jump ! " 
 That says succinctly all that I am saying. God 
 made the frog jump ; but the frog prefers 
 jumping. But when these things are settled 
 
 96 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 there enters the second great principle of the 
 fairy philosophy. 
 
 Any one can see it who wiU simply read 
 " Grimm's Fairy Tales " or the fine collections 
 of Mr. Andrew Lang. For the pleasure of 
 pedantry I will call it the Doctrine of Con- 
 ditional Joy. Touchstone talked of much 
 virtue in an "if" ; according to elfin ethics 
 all virtue is in an " if" The note of the fairy 
 utterance always is, " You may live in a palace 
 of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the 
 word ' cow ' " ; or " You may live happily with 
 the King's daughter, if you do not show her an 
 onion." The vision always hangs upon a veto. 
 All the dizzy and colossal things conceded 
 depend upon one small thing withheld. All 
 the wild and whirling things that are let loose 
 depend upon one thing that is forbidden. Mr. 
 W. B. Yeats, in his exquisite and piercing 
 elfin poetry, describes the elves as lawless ; 
 they plunge in innocent anarchy on the un- 
 bridled horses of the air — 
 
 "Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide. 
 And dance upon the mountains like a flame." 
 
 It is a dreadful thing to say that Mr. W. B. 
 Yeats does not understand fairyland. But I 
 do say it. He is an ironical Irishman, full of 
 
 97 G 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 intellectual reactions. He is not stupid 
 enough to understand fairyland. Fairies prefer 
 people of the yokel type like myself; people 
 who gape and grin and do as they are told. 
 Mr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous 
 insurrection of his own race. But the lawless- 
 ness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness, 
 founded on reason and justice. The Fenian 
 is rebelling against something he understands 
 only too well ; but the true citizen of fairy- 
 land is obeying something that he does not 
 understand at all. In the fairy tale an incom- 
 prehensible happiness rests upon an incom- 
 prehensible condition. A box is opened, and 
 all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and 
 cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. 
 A flower is plucked, and human lives are 
 forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of 
 God is gone. 
 
 This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is 
 certainly not lawlessness or even liberty, though 
 men under a mean modern tyranny may think it 
 liberty by comparison. People out of Portland 
 Gaol might think Fleet Street free ; but closer 
 study will prove that both fairies and journalists 
 are the slaves of duty. Fairy godmothers 
 seem at least as strict as other godmothers. 
 Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland 
 
 98 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 and a coachman out of nowhere, but she 
 received a command — which might have come 
 out of Brixton — that she should be back by 
 twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper ; and it 
 cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common 
 a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in 
 a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill ; this 
 one sees all things in a mirror ; they may all 
 live in glass houses if they will not throw 
 stones. For this thin glitter of glass every- 
 where is the expression of the fact that the 
 happiness is bright but brittle, like the sub- 
 stance most easily smashed by a housemaid or 
 a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank 
 into me and became my sentiment towards the 
 whole world. I felt and feel that life itself is 
 as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the 
 window-pane ; and when the heavens were 
 compared to the terrible crystal I can remember 
 a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop 
 the cosmos with a crash. 
 
 Remember, however, that to be breakable is 
 not the same as to be perishable. Strike a glass, 
 and it will not endure an instant ; simply do 
 not strike it, and it will endure a thousand years. 
 Such, it seemed, was the joy of man, either in 
 elfland or on earth ; the happiness depended 
 on not doing something which you could at any 
 
 99 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 moment do and which, very often, it was not 
 obvious why you should not do. Now, the 
 point here is that to me this did not seem 
 unjust. If the miller's third son said to the 
 fairy, " Explain why I must not stand on my 
 head in the fairy palace," the other might fairly 
 reply, " Well, if it comes to that, explain the 
 fairy palace." If Cinderella says, " How is it 
 that I must leave the ball at twelve ? " her god- 
 mother might answer, " How is it that you are 
 going there till twelve ? " If I leave a man in 
 my will ten talking elephants and a hundred 
 winged horses, he cannot complain if the con- 
 ditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the 
 gift. He must not look a winged horse in the 
 mouth. And it seemed to me that existence 
 was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could 
 not complain of not understanding the limita- 
 tions of the vision when I did not understand 
 the vision they limited. The frame was no 
 stranger than the picture. The veto might 
 well be as wild as the vision ; it might be as 
 startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as 
 fantastic and terrible as the towering trees. 
 
 For this reason (we may call it the fairy god- 
 mother philosophy) I never could join the 
 young men of my time in feeling what they 
 called the general sentiment of revolt, I should 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 have resisted, let us hope, any rules that were 
 evil, and with these and their definition I shall 
 deal in another chapter. But I did not feel 
 disposed to resist any rule merely because it 
 was mysterious. Estates are sometimes held 
 by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the 
 payment of a peppercorn : I was willing to 
 hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by 
 any such feudal fantasy. It could not well be 
 wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold 
 it at all. At this stage I give only one ethical 
 instance to show my meaning. I could never 
 mix in the common murmur of that rising 
 generation against monogamy, because no 
 restriction on sex seemed so odd and unex- 
 pected as sex itself. To be allowed, like 
 Endymion, to make love to the moon and then 
 to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in 
 a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like 
 Endymion's) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping 
 to one woman is a small price for so much as 
 seeing one woman. To complain that I could 
 only be married once was .like complaining that 
 I had only been born once. It was incom- 
 mensurate with the terrible excitement of which 
 one was talking. It showed, not an exagger- 
 ated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility 
 to it. A man is a fool who complains that he 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. 
 Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex ; it 
 is like a man plucking five pears in mere 
 absence of mind. The aesthetes touched the 
 last insane limits of language in their eulogy on 
 lovely things. The thistledown made them 
 weep ; a burnished beetle brought them to 
 their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed 
 me for an instant, for this reason, that it never 
 occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in 
 any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) 
 might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a 
 blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to 
 find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty 
 could not even keep sober for the blackbird. 
 They would not go through common Christian 
 marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. 
 Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in 
 ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sun- 
 sets were not valued because we could not pay 
 for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong ; 
 we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them 
 by not being Oscar Wilde. 
 
 Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor 
 of the nursery, and I have not found any books 
 so sensible since. I left the nurse guardian of 
 tradition and democracy, and I have not found 
 any modern type so sanely radical or so sanely 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 conservative. But the matter for important 
 comment was here : that when I first went out 
 into the mental atmosphere of the modern 
 world, I found that the modern world was 
 positively opposed on two points to my nurse 
 and to the nursery tales. It has taken me a 
 long time to find out that the modern world is 
 wrong and my nurse was right. The reaUy 
 curious thing was this : that modern thought 
 contradicted this basic creed of my boyhood on 
 its two most essential doctrines. I have ex- 
 plained that the fairy tales founded in me two 
 convictions ; first, that this world is a wild and 
 startling place, which might have been quite 
 different, but which is quite delightful ; second, 
 that before this wildness and delight one may 
 weU be modest and submit to the queerest 
 limitations of so queer a kindness. But I found 
 the whole modern world running like a high 
 tide against both my tendernesses ; and the 
 shock of that collision created two sudden and 
 spontaneous sentiments, which I have had ever 
 since and which, crude as they were, have since 
 hardened into convictions. 
 
 First, I found the whole modern world talking 
 scientific fatalism ; saying that everything is as 
 it must always have been, being unfolded 
 without fault from the beginning. The leaf on 
 
 103 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 the tree is green because it could never have 
 been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philo- 
 sopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely 
 because it might have been scarlet. He feels 
 as if it had turned green an instant before he 
 looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white 
 on the strictly reasonable ground that it might 
 have been black. Every colour has in it a bold 
 quality as of choice ; the red of garden roses is 
 not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly 
 spilt blood. He feels that something has been 
 done. But the great determinists of the nineteenth 
 century were strongly against this native feeling 
 that something had happened an instant before. 
 In fact, according to them, nothing ever really 
 had happened since the beginning of the world. 
 Nothing ever had happened since existence had 
 happened ; and even about the date of that 
 they were not very sure. 
 
 The modern world as I found it was solid for 
 modern Calvinism, for the necessity of things 
 being as they are. But when I came to ask them 
 I found they had really no proof of this un- 
 avoidable repetition in things except the fact 
 that the things were repeated. Now, the mere 
 repetition made the things to me rather more 
 weird than more rational. It was as if, having 
 seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and 
 104 
 
The Ethics of Elfiand 
 
 dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six 
 other noses of the same astonishing shape. I 
 should have fancied for a moment that it must 
 be some local secret society. So one elephant 
 having a trunk was odd ; but all elephants 
 having trunks looked like a plot. I speak here 
 only of an emotion, and of an emotion at once 
 stubborn and subtle. But the repetition in 
 Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited 
 repetition, like that of an angry schoolmaster 
 saying the same thing over and over again. 
 The grass seemed signalling to me with all its 
 fingers at once ; the crowded stars seemed bent 
 upon being understood. The sun would make 
 me see him if he rose a thousand times. The 
 recurrences of the universe rose to the madden- 
 ing rhythm of an incantation, and I began to 
 see an idea. 
 
 AU the towering materialism which dominates 
 the modern mind rests ultimately upon one 
 assumption ; a false assumption. It is supposed 
 that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is 
 probably dead ; a piece of clockwork. People 
 feel that if the universe was personal it would 
 vary ; if the sun were alive it would dance. 
 This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. 
 For the variation in human affairs is generally 
 brought into them, not by life, but by death ; 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 by the dying down or breaking ofF of their 
 strength or desire. A man varies his move- 
 ments because of some slight element of failure 
 or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because 
 he is tired of walking ; or he walks because he 
 is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy 
 were so gigantic that he never tired of going to 
 Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly 
 as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very 
 speed and ecstasy of his life would have the 
 stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. 
 I do not rise every morning ; but the variation 
 is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. 
 Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it 
 might be true that the sun rises regularly 
 because he never gets tired of rising. His 
 routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but 
 to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be 
 seen, for instance, in children, when they find 
 some game or joke that they specially enjoy. 
 A child kicks his legs rhythmically through 
 excess, not absence, of life. Because children 
 have abounding vitality, because they are in 
 spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things 
 repeated and unchanged. They always say, 
 *' Do it again " ; and the grown-up person 
 does it again until he is nearly dead. For 
 grown-up people are not strong enough to 
 io6 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong 
 enough to exult in monotony. It is possible 
 that God says every morning, " Do it again " 
 to the sun ; and every evening, " Do it again " 
 to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity 
 that makes all daisies alike ; it may be that 
 God makes every daisy separately, but has 
 never got tired of making them. It may be 
 that He has the eternal appetite of infancy ; for 
 we have sinned and grown old, and our Father 
 is younger than we. The repetition in Nature 
 may not be a mere recurrence ; it may be a 
 theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird 
 who laid an egg. If the human being con- 
 ceives and brings forth a human child instead 
 of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, 
 the reason may not be that we are fixed in an 
 animal fate without life or purpose. It may be 
 that our little tragedy has touched the gods, 
 that they admire it from their starry galleries, 
 and that at the end of every human drama man 
 is called again and again before the curtain. 
 Repetition may go on for millions of years, by 
 mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. 
 Man may stand on the earth generation after 
 generation, and yet each birth be his positively 
 last appearance. 
 
 This was my first conviction ; made by the 
 107 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 shock of my childish emotions meeting the 
 modern creed in mid-career. I had always 
 vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the sense 
 that they are wonderful : now I began to think 
 them miracles in the stricter sense that they 
 were wilful. I mean that they were, or might 
 be, repeated exercises of some will. In short, 
 I had always believed that the world involved 
 magic : now I thought that perhaps it involved 
 a magician. And this pointed a profound 
 emotion always present and sub-conscious ; that 
 this world of ours has some purpose ; and if 
 there is a purpose, there is a person. I had 
 always felt life first as a story : and if there is 
 a story there is a story-teller. 
 
 But modern thought also hit my second 
 human tradition. It went against the fairy 
 feeling about strict limits and conditions. 
 The one thing it loved to talk about was 
 expansion and largeness. Herbert Spencer 
 would have been greatly annoyed if any one 
 had called him an imperialist, and therefore it 
 is highly regrettable that nobody did. But he 
 was an imperialist of the lowest type. He 
 popularized this contemptible notion that the 
 size of the solar system ought to over-awe the 
 spiritual dogma of man. Why should a man 
 surrender his dignity to the solar system any 
 1 08 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 more than to a whale ? If mere size proves 
 that man is not the image of God, then a whale 
 may be the image of God ; a somewhat formless 
 image ; what one might call an impressionist 
 portrait. It is quite futile to argue that man is 
 small compared to the cosmos ; for man was 
 always small compared to the nearest tree. But 
 Herbert Spencer, in his headlong imperialism, 
 would insist that we had in some way been 
 conquered and annexed by the astronomical 
 universe. He spoke about men and their 
 ideals exactly as the most insolent Unionist 
 talks about the Irish and their ideals. He 
 turned mankind into a small nationality. And 
 his evil influence can be seen even in the most 
 spirited and honourable of later scientific 
 authors ; notably in the early romances of Mr. 
 H. G. Wells. Many moralists have in an 
 exaggerated way represented the earth as 
 wicked. But Mr. Wells and his school made 
 the heavens wicked. We should lift up our 
 eyes to the stars from whence would come our 
 ruin. 
 
 But the expansion of which I speak was 
 much more evil than all this. I have remarked 
 that the materialist, like the madman, is in 
 prison ; in the prison of one thought. These 
 people seemed to think it singularly inspiring 
 
 109 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 to keep on saying that the prison was very 
 large. The size of this scientific universe gave 
 one no novelty, no relief. The cosmos went 
 on for ever, but not in its wildest constellation 
 could there be anything really interesting ; any- 
 thing, for instance, such as forgiveness or free 
 will. The grandeur or infinity of the secret of 
 its cosmos added nothing to it. It was like 
 telling a prisoner in Reading gaol that he 
 would be glad to hear that the gaol now 
 covered half the county. The warder would 
 have nothing to show the man except more 
 and more long corridors of stone lit by ghastly 
 lights and empty of all that is human. So 
 these expanders of the universe had nothing 
 to show us except more and more infinite 
 corridors of space lit by ghastly suns and empty 
 of all that is divine. 
 
 In fairyland there had been a real law ; a law 
 that could be broken, for the definition of a 
 law is something that can be broken. But the 
 machinery of this cosmic prison was something 
 that could not be broken ; for we ourselves 
 were only a part of its machinery. We were 
 either unable to do things or we were destined 
 to do them. The idea of the mystical condition 
 quite disappeared ; one can neither have the 
 firmness of keeping laws nor the fun of breaking 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 them. The largeness of this universe had 
 nothing of that freshness and airy outbreak 
 which we have praised in the universe of the 
 poet. This modern universe is literally an 
 empire ; that is, it is vast, but it is not free. 
 One went into larger and larger windowless 
 rooms, rooms big with Babylonian perspective ; 
 but one never found the smallest window or a 
 whisper of outer air. 
 
 Their infernal parallels seemed to expand 
 
 with distance ; but for me all good things come 
 
 to a point, swords for instance. So finding the 
 
 boast of the big cosmos so unsatisfactory to my 
 
 emotions I began to argue about it a little ; and 
 
 1 soon found that the whole attitude was even 
 
 shallower than could have been expected. 
 
 According to these people the cosmos was one 
 
 thing since it had one unbroken rule. Only 
 
 (they would say) while it is one thing it is 
 
 also the only thing there is. Why, then, should 
 
 one worry particularly to call it large ? There 
 
 is nothing to compare it with. It would be 
 
 just as sensible to call it small. A man may 
 
 say, " I like this vast cosmos, with its throng of 
 
 stars and its crowd of varied creatures." But 
 
 if it comes to that why should not a man say, 
 
 " I like this cosy little cosmos, with its decent 
 
 number of stars and as neat a provision of live 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 stock as I wish to see " ? One is as good as the 
 other ; they are both mere sentiments. It is 
 mere sentiment to rejoice that the sun is larger 
 than the earth ; it is quite as sane a sentiment 
 to rejoice that the sun is no larger than it is. 
 A man chooses to have an emotion about the 
 largeness of the world ; why should he not 
 choose to have an emotion about its smallness ? 
 It happened that I had that emotion. When 
 one is fond of anything one addresses it by 
 diminutives, even if it is an elephant or a 
 lifeguardsman. The reason is, that anything, 
 however huge, that can be conceived of as com- 
 plete, can be conceived of as small. If military 
 moustaches did not suggest a sword or tusks 
 a tail, then the object would be vast because it 
 would be immeasurable. But the moment you 
 can imagine a guardsman you can imagine a 
 small guardsman. The moment you really see 
 an elephant you can call it " Tiny." If you 
 can make a statue of a thing you can make a 
 statuette of it. These people professed that 
 the universe was one coherent thing ; but they 
 were not fond of the universe. But I was 
 frightfully fond of the universe and wanted to 
 address it by a diminutive. I often did so ; and 
 it never seemed to mind. Actually and in 
 truth I did feel that these dim dogmas of 
 
The Ethics of Elfiand 
 
 vitality were better expressed by calling the 
 world small than by calling it large. For 
 about infinity there was a sort of carelessness 
 which was the reverse of the fierce and pious 
 care which I felt touching the pricelessness and 
 the peril of life. They showed only a dreary 
 waste ; but I felt a sort of sacred thrift. For 
 economy is far more romantic than extravagance. 
 To them stars were an unending income of 
 halfpence ; but I felt about the golden sun and 
 the silver moon as a schoolboy feels if he has 
 one sovereign and one shilling. 
 
 These subconscious convictions are best hit 
 oflF by the colour and tone of certain tales. 
 Thus I have said that stories of magic alone 
 can express my sense that life is not only a 
 pleasure but a kind of eccentric privilege. I 
 may express this other feeling of cosmic cosiness 
 by allusion to another book always read in 
 boyhood, " Robinson Crusoe," which I read 
 about this time, and which owes its eternal vivacity 
 to the fact that it celebrates the poetry of limits, 
 nay, even the wild romance of prudence. Crusoe 
 is a man on a small rock with a few comforts just 
 snatched from the sea : the best thing in the 
 book is simply the list of things saved from the 
 wreck. The greatest of poems is an inventory. 
 Every kitchen tool becomes ideal because 
 113 H 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 Crusoe might have dropped it in the sea. It is 
 a good exercise, in empty or ugly hours of the 
 day, to look at anything, the coal-scuttle or the 
 book-case, and think how happy one could be 
 to have brought it out of the sinking ship on 
 to the solitary island. But it is a better exercise 
 still to remember how all things have had this 
 hair-breadth escape : everything has been saved 
 from a wreck. Every man has had one horrible 
 adventure : as a hidden untimely birth he had 
 not been, as infants that never see the light. 
 Men spoke much in my boyhood of restricted 
 or ruined men of genius : and it was common 
 to say that many a man was a Great Might- 
 Have-Been. To me it is a more solid and 
 startling fact that any man in the street is a 
 Great Might-Not-Have-Been. 
 
 But I really felt (the fancy may seem foolish) 
 as if all the order and number of things were 
 the romantic remnant of Crusoe's ship. That 
 there are two sexes and one sun, was like the 
 fact that there were two guns and one axe. It 
 was poignantly urgent that none should be lost ; 
 but somehow, it was rather fun that none could 
 be added. The trees and the planets seemed 
 like things saved from the wreck : and when I 
 saw the Matterhorn I was glad that it had not 
 been overlooked in the confusion. I felt 
 
 114 
 
The Ethics of Elfland 
 
 economical about the stars as if they were 
 sapphires (they are called so in Milton's Eden) : 
 I hoarded the hills. For the universe is a single 
 jewel, and while it is a natural cant to talk of a 
 jewel as peerless and priceless, of this jewel it is 
 literally true. This cosmos is indeed without 
 peer and without price : for there cannot be 
 another one. 
 
 Thus ends, in unavoidable inadequacy, the 
 attempt to utter the unutterable things. These 
 are my ultimate attitudes towards life ; the soils 
 for the seeds of doctrine. These in Some dark 
 way I thought before I could write, and felt 
 before I could think : that we may proceed more 
 easily afterwards, I will roughly recapitulate 
 them now. I felt in my bones ; first, that this 
 world does not explain itself. It may be a 
 miracle with a supernatural explanation ; it may 
 be a conjuring trick, with a natural explanation. 
 But the explanation of the conjuring trick, if it 
 is to satisfy me, wiU have to be better than the 
 natural explanations I have heard. The thing 
 is magic, true or false. Second, I came to feel 
 as if magic must have a meaning, and meaning 
 must have some one to mean it. There was 
 something personal in the world, as in a work 
 of art ; whatever it meant it meant violently. 
 Third, I thought this purpose beautiful in its 
 
 "5 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 old design, in spite of its defects, such as 
 dragons. Fourth, that the proper form of 
 thanks to it is some form of humility and 
 restraint : we should thank God for beer and 
 Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. 
 We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made 
 us. And last, and strangest, there had come 
 into my mind a vague and vast impression that 
 in some way all good was a remnant to be 
 stored and held sacred out of some primordial 
 ruin. Man had saved his good as Crusoe saved 
 his goods : he had saved them from a wreck. 
 All this I felt and the age gave me no en- 
 couragement to feel it. And all this time I 
 had not even thought of Christian theology. 
 
 ii6 
 
Chapter N —The Flag of the World 
 
 WHEN I was a boy there were two 
 curious men running about who 
 were called the optimist and the 
 pessimist. I constantly used the 
 words myself, but I cheerfully confess that I 
 never had any very special idea of what they 
 meant. The only thing which might be con- 
 sidered evident was that they could not mean 
 what they said ; for the ordinary verbal explana- 
 tion was that the optimist thought this world as 
 good as it could be, while the pessimist thought 
 it as bad as it could be. Both these statements 
 being obviously raving nonsense, one had to 
 cast about for other explanations. An optimist 
 could not mean a man who thought everything 
 right and nothing wrong. For that is meaning- 
 less ; it Is like calling everything right and 
 nothing left. Upon the whole, I came to the 
 conclusion that the optimist thought everything 
 good except the pessimist, and that the pessimist 
 thought everything bad, except himself. It 
 would be unfair to omit altogether from the list 
 the mysterious but suggestive definition said to 
 have been given by a little girl, " An optimist is 
 a man who looks after your eyes, and a pessimist 
 
 117 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 is a man who looks after your feet." I am not 
 sure that this is not the best definition of all. 
 There is even a sort of allegorical truth in it. 
 For there might, perhaps, be a profitable dis- 
 tinction drawn between that more dreary thinker 
 who thinks merely of our contact with the earth 
 from moment to moment, and that happier 
 thinker who considers rather our primary power 
 of vision and of choice of road. 
 
 But this is a deep mistake in this alterna- 
 tive of the optimist and the pessimist. The 
 assumption of it is that a man criticises this 
 world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were 
 being shown over a new suite of apartments. If 
 a man came to this world from some other world 
 in full possession of his powers he might discuss 
 whether the advantage of midsummer woods 
 made up for the disadvantage of mad dogs, just 
 as a man looking for lodgings might balance the 
 presence of a telephone against the absence of a 
 sea view. But no man is in that position. A 
 man belongs to this world before he begins to 
 ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought 
 for the flag, and often won heroic victories for 
 the flag long before he has ever enlisted. To 
 put shortly what seems the essential matter, 
 he has a loyalty long before he has any 
 admiration. 
 
 ii8 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 In the last chapter it has been said that the 
 primary feeling that this world is strange and 
 yet attractive is best expressed in fairy tales. 
 The reader may, if he likes, put down the next 
 stage to that bellicose and even jingo literature 
 which commonly comes next in the history of a 
 boy. We all owe much sound morality to the 
 penny dreadfuls. Whatever the reason, it 
 seemed and still seems to me that our attitude 
 towards life can be better expressed in terms of a 
 kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism 
 and approval. My acceptance of the universe 
 is not optimism, it is more like patriotism. 
 It is a matter of primary loyalty. The world is 
 not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are 
 to leave because it is miserable. It is the 
 fortress of our family, with the flag flying on 
 the turret, and the more miserable it is the less 
 we should leave it. The point is not that this 
 world is too sad to love or too glad not to 
 love ; the point is that when you do love a 
 thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and 
 its sadness a reason for loving it more. All 
 optimistic thoughts about England and all 
 pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons 
 for the English patriot. Similarly, optimism 
 and pessimism are alike arguments for the 
 cosmic patriot. 
 
 119 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 Let us suppose we are confronted with a 
 desperate thing — say Pimlico. If we think 
 what is really best for Pimlico we shall find 
 the thread of thought leads to the throne or 
 the mystic and the arbitary. It is not enough 
 for a man to disapprove of Pimlico : in that 
 case he will merely cut his throat or move to 
 Chelsea. Nor, certainly, is it enough for a 
 man to approve of Pimlico : for then it wUl 
 remain Pimlico, which would be awful. The 
 only way out of it seems to be for somebody to 
 love Pimlico : to love it with a transcendental 
 tie and without any earthly reason. If there 
 arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico 
 would rise into ivory towers and golden 
 pinnacles ; Pimlico would attire herself as a 
 woman does when she is loved. For decora- 
 tion is not given to hide horrible things ; but 
 to decorate things already adorable. A mother 
 does not give her child a blue bow because he 
 is so ugly without it. A lover does not give 
 a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men 
 loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbi- 
 tarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or 
 two might be fairer than Florence. Some 
 readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I 
 answer that this is the actual history of man- 
 kind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 great. Go back to the darkest roots of civilisa- 
 tion and you will find them knotted round some 
 sacred stone or encircling some sacred well. 
 People first paid honour to a spot and after- 
 wards gained glory for it. Men did not love 
 Rome because she was great. She was great 
 because they had loved her. 
 
 The eighteenth-century theories of the social 
 contract have been exposed to much clumsy 
 criticism in our time ; in so far as they meant 
 that there is at the back of all historic govern- 
 ment an idea of content and co-operation, they 
 were demonstrably right. But they really were 
 wrong in so far as they suggested that men had 
 ever aimed at order or ethics directly by a 
 conscious exchange of interests. Morality did 
 not begin by one man saying to another, " I 
 will not hit you if you do not hit me " ; there 
 is no trace of such a transaction. There is a 
 trace of both men having said, " We must not 
 hit each other in the- holy place." They gained 
 their morality by guarding their religion. They 
 did not cultivate courage. They fought for 
 the shrine, and found they had become courag- 
 eous. They did not cultivate cleanliness. They 
 purified themselves for the altar, and found 
 that they were clean. The history of the Jews 
 is the only early docuihent known to most 
 
 121 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 Englishmen, and the facts can be judged suffi- 
 ciendy from that. The Ten Commandments 
 which have been found substantially common 
 to mankind were merely military commands ; 
 a code of regimental orders, issued to protect a 
 certain ark across a certain desert. Anarchy 
 was evil because it endangered the sanctity. 
 And only when they made a holy day for God 
 did they find they had made a holiday for 
 men. 
 
 If it be granted that this primary devotion to 
 a place or thing is a source of creative energy, 
 we can pass on to a very peculiar fact. Let us 
 reiterate for an instant that the only right 
 optimism is a sort of universal patriotism. 
 What is the matter with the pessimist ? I think 
 it can be stated by saying that he is the cosmic 
 anti-patriot. And what is the matter with the 
 anti-patriot ? I think it can be stated, without 
 undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid 
 friend. And what is the matter with the candid 
 friend ? There we strike the rock of real life 
 and immutable human nature. 
 
 I venture to say that what is bad in the candid 
 friend is simply that he is not candid. He is 
 keeping something back — his own gloomy 
 pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has 
 a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain 
 sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. 
 I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism 
 which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and 
 gushing actresses ; that is only patriotism speak- 
 ing plainly. A man who says that no patriot 
 should attack the Boer War until it is over is 
 not worth answering intelligently ; he is saying 
 that no good son should warn his mother off a 
 cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is 
 an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest 
 men, and the explanation of him is, I think, 
 what I have suggested : he is the uncandid 
 candid friend ; the man who says, " I am sorry 
 to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. 
 And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a 
 traitor ; for he is using that ugly knowledge 
 which was allowed him to strengthen the army, 
 to discourage people from joining it. Because 
 he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military 
 adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting 
 sergeant. Just in the same way the pessimist 
 (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the free- 
 dom that life allows to her counsellors to lure 
 away the people from her flag. Granted that 
 he states only facts, it is still essential to know 
 what are his emotions, what is his motive. It 
 may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham 
 123 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 are down with smallpox ; but we want to know 
 whether this is stated by some great philosopher 
 who wants to curse the gods, or only by some 
 common clergyman who wants to help the 
 men. 
 
 The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he 
 chastises gods and men, but that he does not 
 love what he chastises — he has not this primary 
 and supernatural loyalty to things. "What is the 
 evil of the man commonly called an optimist .? 
 Obviously, it is felt that the optimist, wishing 
 to defend the honour of this world, will defend 
 the indefensible. He is the jingo of the 
 universe ; he will say, " My cosmos, right or 
 wrong." He will be less inclined to the reform 
 of things ; more inclined to a sort of front- 
 bench official answer to all attacks, soothing 
 every one with assurances. He will not wash 
 the world, but whitewash the world. All this 
 (which is true of a type of optimist) leads us to 
 the one really interesting point of psychology, 
 which could not be explained without it. 
 
 We say there must be a primal loyalty to 
 life : the only question is, shall it be a natural 
 or a supernatural loyalty ? If you like to put 
 it so, shall it be a reasonable or an unreasonable 
 loyalty ? Now, the extraordinary thing is that 
 the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak 
 124 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 defence of everything) comes in with the reason- 
 able optimism. Rational optimism leads to 
 stagnation : it is irrational optimism that leads 
 to reform. Let me explain by using once more 
 the parallel of patriotism. The man who is 
 most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly 
 the man who loves it with a reason. The man 
 who will improve the place is the man who 
 loves it without a reason. If a man loves some 
 feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he 
 may find himself defending that feature against 
 Pimlico itself But if he simply loves Pimlico 
 itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the 
 New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reform 
 may be excessive ; I only say that it is the 
 mystic patriot who reforms. Mere jingo self- 
 contentment is commonest among those who 
 have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. 
 The worst jingoes do not love England, but a 
 theory of England. If we love England for 
 being an empire, we may overrate the success 
 with which we rule the Hindoos. But if we 
 love it only for being a nation, we can face all 
 events : for it would be a nation even if the 
 Hindoos ruled us. Thus also only those will 
 permit their patriotism to falsify history whose 
 patriotism depends on history. A man who 
 loves England for being English will not mind 
 
 "5 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 how she arose. But a man who loves England 
 for being Anglo-Saxon may go against all facts 
 for his fancy. He may end (like Carlyle and 
 Freeman) by maintaining that the Norman 
 Conquest was a Saxon Conquest. He may 
 end in utter unreason — because he has a 
 reason. A man who loves France for being 
 military will palliate the army of 1870. But a 
 man who loves France for being France will 
 improve the army of 1870. This is exactly 
 what the French have done, and France is a 
 good instance of the working paradox. No- 
 where else is patriotism more purely abstract 
 and arbitrary ; and nowhere else is reform 
 more drastic and sweeping. The more tran- 
 scendental is your patriotism, the more practical 
 are your politics. 
 
 Perhaps the most everyday instance of this 
 point is in the case of women ; and their 
 strange and strong loyalty. Some stupid 
 people started the idea that because women 
 obviously back up their own people through 
 everything, therefore women are blind and do 
 not see anything. They can hardly have 
 known any women. The same women who 
 are ready to defend their men through thick 
 and thin are (in their personal intercourse with 
 the man) almost morbidly lucid about the 
 126 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his 
 head. A man's friend likes him but leaves him as 
 he is : his wife loves him and is always trying 
 to turn him into somebody else. Women who 
 are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics 
 in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this 
 well when he made Pendennis' mother, who 
 worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that 
 he would go wrong as a man. She underrated 
 his virtue, though she overrated his value. The 
 devotee is entirely free to criticise ; the fanatic 
 can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind ; that 
 is the last thing that it is. Love is bound ; and 
 the more it is bound the less it is blind. 
 
 This at least had come to be my position 
 about all that was called optimism, pessimism, 
 and improvement. Before any cosmic act of 
 reform we must have a cosmic oath of allegiance. 
 A man must be interested in life, then he could 
 be disinterested in his views of it. " My son 
 give me thy heart " ; the heart must be fixed 
 on the right thing : the moment we have a 
 fixed heart we have a free hand. I must pause 
 to anticipate an obvious criticism. It will be 
 said that a rational person accepts the world as 
 mixed of good and evil with a decent satis- 
 faction and a decent endurance. But this is 
 exactly the attitude which I maintain to be 
 
 127 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 defective. It is, I know, very common in this 
 age ; it was perfectly put in those quiet lines 
 of Matthew Arnold which are more piercingly 
 blasphemous than the shrieks of Schopen- 
 hauer — 
 
 " Enough we live": — and if a life, 
 With large results so little rife, 
 Though bearable, seem hardly worth 
 This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth." 
 
 I know this feeling fills our epoch, and I 
 think it freezes our epoch. For our Titanic 
 purposes of faith and revolution, what we need 
 is not the cold acceptance of the world as a 
 compromise, but some way in which we can 
 heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not 
 want joy and anger to neutralise each other and 
 produce a surly contentment ; we want a fiercer 
 delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to 
 feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to 
 be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to 
 which we can return at evening. 
 
 No one doubts that an ordinary man can 
 get on with this world : but we demand not 
 strength enough to get on with it, but strength 
 enough to get it on. Can he hate it enough 
 to change it, and yet love it enough to think it 
 worth changing ? Can he look up at its colossal 
 good without once feeling acquiescence ? Can 
 128 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 he look up at its colossal evil without once 
 feeling despair ? Can he, in short, be at once 
 not only a pessimist and an optimist, but a 
 fanatical pessimist and a fanatical optimist ? Is 
 he enough of a pagan to die for the world, and 
 enough of a Christian to die to it ? In this 
 combination, I maintain, it is the rational 
 optimist who fails, the irrational optimist who 
 succeeds. He is ready to smash the whole 
 universe for the sake of itself. 
 
 I put these things not in their mature logical 
 sequence, but as they came : and this view was 
 cleared and sharpened by an accident of the 
 time. Under the lengthening shadow of Ibsen, 
 an argument arose whether it was not a very 
 nice thing to murder one's self Grave moderns 
 told us that we must not even say "poor 
 fellow," of a man who had blown his brains 
 out, since he was an enviable person, and had 
 only blown them out because of their excep- 
 tional excellence. Mr. William Archer even 
 suggested that in the golden age there would 
 be penny-in-the-slot machines, by which a man 
 could kill himself for a penny. In all this I 
 found myself utterly hostile to many who called 
 themselves liberal and humane. Not only is 
 suicide a sin, it is the sin. It is the ultimate 
 and absolute evil, the refusal to take an interest 
 129 I 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 in existence ; the refusal to take the oath of 
 loyalty to life. The man who kills a man, kills 
 a man. The man who kills himself, kills all 
 men ; as far as he is concerned he wipes out 
 the world. His act is worse (symbolically 
 considered) than any rape or dynamite outrage. 
 For it destroys all buildings : it insults all 
 women. The thief is satisfied with diamonds ; 
 but the suicide is not : that is his crime. He 
 cannot be bribed, even by the blazing stones of 
 the Celestial City. The thief compliments the 
 things he steals, if not the owner of them. But 
 the suicide insults everything on earth by not 
 stealing it. He defiles every flower by refiising 
 to live for its sake. There is not a tiny creature 
 in the cosmos at whom his death is not a 
 sneer. When a man hangs himself on a tree, 
 the leaves might fall ofF in anger and the birds 
 fly away in fury : for each has received a 
 personal affront. Of course there may be 
 pathetic emotional excuses for the act. There 
 often are for rape, and there almost always are 
 for dynamite. But if it comes to clear ideas 
 and the intelligent meaning of things, then 
 there is much more rational and philosophic 
 truth in the burial at the cross-roads and the 
 stake driven through the body, than in Mr. 
 Archer's suicidal automatic machines. There 
 130 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 is a meaning in burying the suicide apart. The 
 man's crime is different from other crimes — for 
 it makes even crimes impossible. 
 
 About the same time I read a solemn 
 flippancy by some free thinker : he said that a 
 suicide was only the same as a martyr. The 
 open fallacy of this helped to clear the question. 
 Obviously a suicide is the opposite of a martyr. 
 A martyr is a man who cares so much for 
 something outside him, that he forgets his own 
 personal life. A suicide is a man who cares so 
 little for anything outside him, that he wants 
 to see the last of everything. One wants 
 something to begin : the other wants everything 
 to end. In other words, the martyr is noble, 
 exactly because (however he renounces the 
 world or execrates all humanity) he confesses 
 this ultimate link with life ; he sets his heart 
 outside himself: he dies that something may 
 live. The suicide is ignoble because he has 
 not this link with being : he is a mere destroyer ; 
 spiritually, he destroys the universe. And then 
 I remembered the stake and the cross-roads, 
 and the queer fact that Christianity had shown 
 this weird harshness to the suicide. For 
 Christianity had shown a wild encouragement 
 of the martyr. Historic Christianity was 
 accused, not entirely without reason, of carrying 
 131 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 martyrdom and asceticism to a point, desolate 
 and pessimistic. The early Christian martyrs 
 talked of death with a horrible happiness. 
 They blasphemed the beautiful duties of the 
 body : they smelt the grave afar ofF like a field 
 of flowers. All this has seemed to many the 
 very poetry of pessimism. Yet there is the 
 stake at the cross-roads to show what Christi- 
 anity thought of the pessimist. 
 
 This was the first of the long train of 
 enigmas with which Christianity entered the 
 discussion. And there went with it a pecu- 
 liarity of which I shall have to speak more 
 markedly, as a note of all Christian notions, 
 but which distinctly began in this one. The 
 Christian attitude to the martyr and the suicide 
 was not what is so often affirmed in modern 
 morals. It was not a matter of degree. It was 
 not that a line must be drawn somewhere, and 
 that the self-slayer in exaltation fell within the 
 line, the self-slayer in sadness just beyond it. 
 The Christian feeling evidently was not merely 
 that the suicide was carrying martyrdom too 
 far. The Christian feeling was furiously for 
 one and furiously against the other : these two 
 things that looked so much alike were at oppo- 
 site ends of heaven and hell. One man flung 
 away his life ; he was so good that his dry bones 
 132 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 could heal cities in pestilence. Another man 
 flung away life ; he was so bad that his bones 
 would pollute his brethren's. I am not saying 
 this fierceness was right ; but why was it so 
 fierce ? 
 
 Here it was that I first found that my 
 wandering feet were in some beaten track. 
 Christianity had also felt this opposition of the 
 martyr to the suicide : had it perhaps felt it for 
 the same reason ? Had Christianity felt what 
 I felt, but could not (and cannot) express — this 
 need for a first loyalty to things, and then for a 
 ruinous reform of things ? Then I remem- 
 bered that it was actually the charge against 
 Christianity that it combined these two things 
 which I was wildly trying to combine. Christi- 
 anity was accused, at one and the same time, of 
 being too optimistic about the universe and of 
 being too pessimistic about the world. The 
 coincidence made me suddenly stand still. 
 
 An imbecile habit has arisen in modern 
 controversy of saying that such and such a creed 
 can be held in one age but cannot be held in 
 another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible 
 in the twelfth century, but is not credible in 
 the twentieth. You might as well say that a 
 certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, 
 but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You 
 
 133 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 might as well say of a view of the cosmos that 
 it was suitable to half-past three, but not suit- 
 able to half- past four. What a man can believe 
 depends upon his philosophy, not upon the 
 clock or the century. If a man believes in 
 unalterable natural law, he cannot believe in 
 any miracle in any age. If a man believes 
 in a will behind law, he can believe in any 
 miracle in any age. Suppose, for the sake of 
 argument, we are concerned with a case of 
 thaumaturgic healing. A materialist of the 
 twelfth century could not believe it any more 
 than a materialist of the twentieth century. 
 But a Christian Scientist of the twentieth 
 century can believe it as much as a Christian 
 of the twelfth century. It is simply a 
 matter of a man's theory of things. There- 
 fore in dealing with any historical answer, the 
 point is not whether it was given in our time, 
 but whether it was given in answer to our 
 question. And the more I thought about when 
 and how Christianity had come into the world, 
 the more I felt that it had actually come to 
 answer this question. 
 
 It is commonly the loose and latitudinarian 
 Christians who pay quite indefensible compli- 
 ments to Christianity. They talk as if there had 
 never been any piety or pity until Christianity 
 134 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 came, a point on which any mediaeval would 
 have been eager to correct them. They re- 
 present that the remarkable thing about 
 Christianity was that it was the first to preach 
 simplicity or self-restraint, or inwardness and 
 sincerity. They will think me very narrow 
 (whatever that means) if I say that the remark- 
 able thing about Christianity was that it was the 
 first to preach Christianity. Its peculiarity was 
 that it was peculiar, and simplicity and sincerity 
 are not peculiar, but obvious ideals for all man- 
 kind. Christianity was the answer to a riddle, 
 not the last truism uttered after a long talk. 
 Only the other day I saw in an excellent weekly 
 paper of Puritan tone this remark, that 
 Christianity when stripped of its armour of 
 dogma (as who should speak of a man stripped 
 of his armour of bones), turned out to be 
 nothing but the Quaker doctrine of the Inner 
 Light. Now, if I were to say that Christianity 
 came into the world specially to destroy the 
 doctrine of the Inner Light, that would be an 
 exaggeration. But it would be very much 
 nearer to the truth. The last Stoics, like 
 Marcus Aurelius, were exactly the people 
 who did believe in the Inner Light. Their 
 dignity, their weariness, their sad external care 
 for others, their incurable internal care for 
 
 135 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 themselves, were all due to the Inner Light, 
 and existed only by that dismal illumination. 
 Notice that Marcus Aurelius insists, as such 
 introspective moralists always do, upon small 
 things done or undone ; it is because he has 
 not hate or love enough to make a moral 
 revolution. He gets up early in the morning, 
 just as our own aristocrats living the Simple 
 Life get up early in the morning ; because such 
 altruism is much easier than stopping the games 
 of the amphitheatre or giving the English 
 people back their land. Marcus Aurelius is the 
 most intolerable of human types. He is an 
 unselfish egoist. An unselfish egoist is a man 
 who has pride without the excuse of passion. 
 Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the 
 worst is what these people call the Inner Light. 
 Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the 
 worship of the god within. Any one who knows 
 any body knows how it would work ; any one 
 who knows any one from the Higher Thought 
 Centre knows how it does work. That Jones 
 shall worship the god within him turns out 
 ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship 
 Jones. Let Jones worship the sun or moon, 
 anything rather than the Inner Light ; let Jones 
 worship cats or crocodiles, if he can find any in 
 his street, but not the god within. Christianity 
 136 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 came into the world firstly in order to assert 
 with violence that a man had not only to look 
 inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with 
 astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company 
 and a divine captain. The only fun of being a 
 Christian was that a man was not left alone with 
 the Inner Light, but definitely recognised an 
 outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, 
 terrible as an army with banners. 
 
 All the same, it will be as well if Jones does 
 not worship the sun and moon. If he does, 
 there is a tendency for him to imitate them ; to 
 say, that because the sun burns insects alive, he 
 may burn insects alive. He thinks that because 
 the sun gives people sun-stroke, he may give 
 his neighbour measles. He thinks that because 
 the^moon is said to drive men mad, he may 
 drive his wife mad. This ugly side of mere 
 external optimism had also shown itself in the 
 ancient world. About the time when the Stoic 
 idealism had begun to show the weaknesses of 
 pessimism, the old nature worship of the 
 ancients had begun to show the enormous 
 weaknesses of optimism. Nature worship is 
 natural enough while the society is young, or, in 
 other words. Pantheism is aU right as long as it 
 is the worship of Pan. But Nature has another 
 side which experience and sin are not slow in 
 
 137 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 finding out, and it is no flippancy to say of the 
 god Pan that he soon showed the cloven hoof. 
 The only objection to Natural Religion is that 
 somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man 
 loves Nature in the morning for her innocence 
 and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving 
 her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. 
 He washes at dawn In clear water as did the 
 Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the 
 dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bvdl's 
 blood, as did Julian the Apostate. The mere 
 pursuit of health always leads to something un- 
 healthy. Physical nature must not be made 
 the direct object of obedience ; it must be 
 enjoyed, not worshipped. Stars and mountains 
 must not be taken seriously. If they are, we 
 end where the pagan nature worship ended. 
 Because the earth is kind, we can imitate all her 
 cruelties. Because sexuality is sane, we can aU 
 go mad about sexuality. Mere optimism had 
 reached its insane and appropriate termina- 
 tion. The theory that everything was good 
 had become an orgy of everything that was 
 bad. 
 
 On the other side our idealist pessimists 
 
 were represented by the old remnant of the 
 
 Stoics. Marcus Aurelius and his friends had 
 
 really given up the idea of any god in the 
 
 138 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 universe and looked only to the god within. 
 They had no hope of any virtue in nature, and 
 hardly any hope of any virtue in society. 
 They had not enough interest in the outer 
 world really to wreck or revolutionise it. They 
 did not love the city enough to set fire to it. 
 Thus the ancient world was exactly in our own 
 desolate dilemma. The only people who really 
 enjoyed this world were busy breaking it up ; 
 and the virtuous people did not care enough 
 about them to knock them down. In this 
 dilemma (the same as ours) Christianity sud- 
 denly stepped in and offered a singular answer, 
 which the world eventually accepted as the 
 answer. It was the answer then, and I think 
 it is the answer now. 
 
 This answer was like the slash of a sword ; 
 it sundered ; it did not in any sense sentiment- 
 ally unite. Briefly, it divided God from the 
 cosmos. That transcendence and distinctness 
 of the deity which some Christians now want 
 to remove from Christianity, was really the 
 only reason why any one wanted to be a 
 Christian. , It was the whole point of the 
 Christian answer to the unhappy pessimist and 
 the still more unhappy optimist. As 1 am 
 here only concerned with their particular 
 problem, I shall indicate only briefly this 
 
 139 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 great metaphysical suggestion. All descrip- 
 tions of the creating or sustaining principle 
 in things must be metaphorical, because they 
 must be verbal. Thus the pantheist is forced 
 to speak of God in all things as if he were 
 in a box. Thus the evolutionist has, in his 
 very name, the idea of being unrolled like a 
 carpet. All terms, religious and irreligious, 
 are open to this charge. The only question 
 is whether all terms are useless, or whether 
 one can, with such a phrase, cover a distinct 
 idea about the origin of things. I think one 
 can, and so evidently does the evolutionist, or 
 he would not talk about evolution. And the 
 root phrase for all Christian theism was this, 
 that God was a creator, as an artist is a creator. 
 A poet is so separate from his poem that he 
 himself speaks of it as a little thing he has 
 " thrown off." Even in giving it forth he has 
 flung it away. This principle that all creation 
 and procreation is a breaking ofi^ is at least as 
 consistent through the cosmos as the evolu- 
 tionary principle that all growth is a branching 
 out. A woman loses a child even in having 
 a child. All creation is separation. Birth is 
 as solemn a parting as death. 
 
 It was the prime philosophic principle of 
 Christianity that this divorce in the divine act 
 140 
 
The. Flag of the World 
 
 of making (such as severs the poet from the 
 poem or the mother from the new-born child) 
 was the true description of the act whereby 
 the absolute energy made the world. Accord- 
 ing to most philosophers, God in making the 
 world enslaved it. According to Christianity, 
 in making it, He set it free. God had written, 
 not so much a poem, but rather a play ; a 
 play he had planned as perfect, but which had 
 necessarily been left to human actors and stage- 
 managers, who' had since made a great mess of 
 it. I will discuss the truth of this theorem 
 later. Here I have only to point out with 
 what a startling smoothness it passed the 
 dilemma we have discussed in this chapter. 
 In this way at least one could be both happy 
 and indignant without degrading one's self to 
 be either a pessimist or an optimist. On this 
 system one could fight all the forces of exist- 
 ence without deserting the flag of existence. 
 One could be at peace with the universe and 
 yet be at war with the world. St. George 
 could still fight the dragon, however big the 
 monster bulked in the cosmos, though he 
 were bigger than the mighty cities or bigger 
 than the everlasting hills. If he were as big 
 as the world he could yet be killed in the name 
 of the world. St. George had not to consider 
 
 141 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 any obvious odds or proportions in the scale 
 of things, but only the original secret of their 
 design. He can shake his sword at the 
 dragon, even if it is everything ; even if 
 the empty heavens over his head are only the 
 huge arch of its open jaws. 
 
 And then followed an experience impossible 
 to describe. It was as if I had been blundering 
 about since my birth with two huge and un- 
 manageable machines, of different shapes and 
 without apparent connection — the world and 
 the Christian tradition. I had found this hole 
 in the world : the fact that one must somehow 
 find a way of loving the world without trusting 
 it ; somehow one must love the world without 
 being worldly. I found this projecting feature 
 of Christian theology, like a sort of hard spike, 
 the dogmatic insistence that God was personal, 
 and had made a world separate from Himself. 
 The spike of dogma fitted exactly into the hole 
 in the world — it had evidently been meant to 
 go there — and then the strange thing began to 
 happen. When once these two parts of the 
 two machines had come together, one after 
 another, all the other parts fitted and fell in 
 with an eerie exactitude. I could hear bolt 
 after bolt over all the machinery falling into its 
 place with a kind of click of relief. Having 
 142 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 got one part right, all the other parts were 
 repeating that rectitude, as clock after clock 
 strikes noon. Instinct after instinct was 
 answered by doctrine after doctrine. Or, to 
 vary the metaphor, I was like one who had 
 advanced into a hostile country to take one 
 high fortress. And when that fort had fallen 
 the whole country surrendered and turned solid 
 behind me. The whole land was lit up, as it 
 were, back to the first fields of my childhood. 
 All those blind fancies of boyhood which in 
 the fourth chapter I have tried in vain to trace 
 on the darkness, became suddenly transparent 
 and sane. I was right when I felt that roses 
 were red by some sort of choice : it was the 
 divine choice. I was right when I felt that I 
 would almost rather say that grass was the 
 wrong colour than say that it must by necessity 
 have been that colour : it might verily have 
 been any other. My sense that happiness 
 hung on the crazy thread of a condition did 
 mean something when, all was said : it meant 
 the whole doctrine of the Fall. Even those 
 dim and shapeless monsters of notions which I 
 have not been able to describe, much less 
 defend, stepped quietly into their places like 
 colossal caryatides of the creed. The fancy 
 that the cosmos was not vast and void, but 
 
 143 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 small and cosy, had a fulfilled significance 
 now, for anything that is a work of art must 
 be small in the sight of the artist ; to God 
 the stars might be only small and dear, like 
 diamonds. And my haunting instinct that 
 somehow good was not merely a tool to be 
 used, but a relic to be guarded, like the goods 
 from Crusoe's ship — even that had been the 
 wild whisper of something originally wise, for, 
 according to Christianity, we were indeed the 
 survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship 
 that had gone down before the beginning of 
 the world. 
 
 But the important matter was this, that it 
 entirely reversed the reason for optimism. 
 And the instant the reversal was made it felt 
 like the abrupt ease when a bone is put back 
 in the socket. I had often called myself an 
 optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of 
 pessimism. But all the optimism of the age 
 had been false and disheartening for this 
 reason, that it had always been trying to prove 
 that we fit in to the world. The Christian 
 optimism is based on the fact that we do not 
 fit in to the world. I had tried to be happy 
 by telling myself that man is an animal, like 
 any other which sought its meat from God. 
 But now I really was happy, for I had learnt 
 144 
 
The Flag of the World 
 
 that man is a monstrosity. I had been right 
 in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at 
 once worse and better than all things. The 
 optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on 
 the naturalness of everything ; the Christian 
 pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the un- 
 naturalness of everything in the light of the 
 supernatural. The modern philosopher had 
 told me again and again that I was in the right 
 place, and I had still felt depressed even in 
 acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in 
 the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like 
 a bird in spring. The knowledge found out 
 and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark 
 house of infancy. I knew now why grass had 
 always seemed to me as queer as the green 
 beard of a giant, and why I could feel home- 
 sick at home. 
 
 145 
 
Chapter VI — The Paradoxes of Chris- 
 tianity 
 
 THE real trouble with this world of 
 ours is not that it is an unreasonable 
 world, nor even that it is a reason- 
 able one. The commonest kind 
 of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not 
 quite. Life is not an illogicality ; yet it is a 
 trap for logicians. It looks just a little more 
 mathematical and regular than it is ; its exacti- 
 tude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden ; 
 its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse 
 instance of what I mean. Suppose some mathe- 
 matical creature from the moon were to reckon 
 up the human body ; he would at once see that 
 the essential thing about it was that it was 
 duplicate. A man is two men, he on the right 
 exactly resembling him on the left. Having 
 noted that there was an arm on the right and 
 one on the left, a leg on the right and one on 
 the left, he might go further and still find on 
 each side the same number of fingers, the same 
 number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin 
 nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain. 
 At last he would take it as a law ; and then, 
 where he found a heart on one side, would 
 146 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 deduce that there was another heart on the 
 other. And just then, where he most felt he 
 was right, he would be wrong. 
 
 It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an 
 inch that is the uncanny element in everything. 
 It seems a sort of secret treason in the universe. 
 An apple or an orange is round enough to 
 get itself called round, and yet is not round 
 after all. The earth itself is shaped like an 
 orange in order to lure some simple astronomer 
 into calling it a globe. A blade of grass is 
 called after the blade of a sword, because it comes 
 to a point ; but it doesn't. Everywhere in 
 things there is this element of the quiet and 
 incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it 
 never escapes till the last moment. From the 
 grand curve of our earth it could easily be 
 inferred that every inch of it was thus curved. 
 It would seem rational that as a man has a 
 brain on both sides, he should have a heart 
 on both sides. Yet scientific men are still 
 organizing expeditions to find the North Pole, 
 because they are so fond of flat country. 
 Scientific men are also still organising expedi- 
 tions to find a man's heart ; and when they try 
 to find it, they generally get on the wrong side 
 of him. 
 
 Now, actual insight or inspiration is best 
 
 .147 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 tested by whether it guesses these hidden 
 malformations or surprises. If our mathema- 
 tician from the moon saw the two arms and the 
 two ears, he might deduce the two shovilder- 
 blades and the two halves of the brain. But if 
 he guessed that the man's heart was in the 
 right place, then I should call him something 
 more than a mathematician. Now, this is 
 exactly the claim which I have since come ta 
 propound for Christianity. Not merely that it 
 deduces logical truths, but that when it suddenly 
 becomes illogical, it has found, so to speak, an 
 illogical truth. It not only goes right about 
 things, but it goes wrong (if one may say so) 
 exactly where the things go wrong. Its plan 
 suits the secret irregularities, and expects the 
 unexpected. It is simple about the simple 
 truth ; but it is stubborn about the subtle 
 truth. It will admit that a man has two hands, 
 it will not admit (though all the Modernists 
 wail to it) the obvious deduction that he has 
 two hearts. It is my only purpose in this 
 chapter to point this out ; to show that when- 
 ever we feel there is something odd in Christian 
 theology, we shall generally find that there is 
 something odd in the truth. 
 
 I have alluded to an unmeaning phrase to 
 the effect that such and such a creed cannot 
 148 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 be believed in our age. Of course, anything 
 can be believed in any age. But, oddly 
 enough, there really is a sense in which a 
 creed, if it is believed at all, can be believed 
 more fixedly in a complex society than in a 
 simple one. If a man finds Christianity true 
 in Birmingham, he has actually clearer reasons 
 for faith than if he had found it true in Mercia. 
 For the more complicated seems the coincidence, 
 the less it can be a coincidence. If snowflakes 
 fell in the shape, say, of the heart of Midlothian, 
 it might be an accident. But if snowflakes fell 
 in the exact shape of the maze at Hampton 
 Court, I think one might call it a miracle. It 
 is exactly as of such a miracle that I have since 
 come to feel of the philosophy of Christianity. 
 The complication of our modern world proves 
 the truth of the creed more perfectly than any of 
 the plain problems of the ages of faith. It was 
 in Notting Hill and Battersea that I began to 
 see that Christianity was true. This is why 
 the faith has that elaboration of doctrines and 
 details which so much distresses those who 
 admire Christianity without believing in it. 
 When once one believes in a creed, one is 
 proud of its complexity, as scientists are proud 
 of the complexity of science. It shows how 
 rich it is in discoveries. If it is right at allj 
 
 149 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 it is a compliment to say that it's elaborately 
 right. A stick might fit a hole or a stone a 
 hollow by accident. But a key and a lock are 
 both complex. And if a key fits a lock, you 
 know it is the right key. 
 
 But this involved accuracy of the thing 
 makes it very difficult to do what I now 
 have to do, to describe this accumulation of 
 truth. It is very hard for a man to defend 
 anything of which he is entirely convinced. 
 It is comparatively easy when he is only 
 partially convinced. He is partially convinced 
 because he has found this or that proof of the 
 thing, and he can expound it. But a man is 
 not really convinced of a philosophic theory 
 when he finds that something proves it. He 
 is only really convinced when he finds that 
 everything proves it. And the more con- 
 verging reasons he finds pointing to this 
 conviction, the more bewildered he is if 
 asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if 
 one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on 
 the spur of the moment, " Why do you 
 prefer civilisation to savagery ? " he would 
 look wildly round at object after object, and 
 would only be able to answer vaguely, " Why, 
 there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in 
 the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and 
 ISO. 
 
TJie Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 policemen." The whole case for civilisation 
 is that the case for it is complex. It has done 
 so many things. But that very multiplicity of 
 proof which ought to make reply overwhelming 
 makes reply impossible. 
 
 There is, therefore, about all complete con- 
 viction a kind of huge helplessness. The belief 
 is so big that it takes a long time to get it into 
 action. And this hesitation chiefly arises, oddly 
 enough, from an indiiFerence about where one 
 should begin. All roads lead to Rome ; which 
 is one reason why many people never get there. 
 In the case of this defence of the Christian con- 
 viction I confess that I would as soon begin the 
 argument with one thing as another ; I would 
 begin it with a turnip or a taximeter cab. But 
 if I am to be at all careful about making my 
 meaning clear, it will, I think, be wiser to con- 
 tinue the current arguments of the last chapter, 
 which was concerned to urge the first of these 
 mystical coincidences, or rather ratifications. 
 All I had hitherto heard of Christian theology 
 had alienated me from it. I was a pagan at the 
 age of twelve, and a complete agnostic by the 
 age of sixteen ; and I cannot understand any 
 one passing the age of seventeen without having 
 asked himself so simple a question. I did, 
 indeed, retain a cloudy reverence for a cosmic 
 
 151 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 deity and a great historical interest in the 
 Founder of Christianity. But I certainly re- 
 garded Him as a man ; though perhaps I thought 
 that, even in that point, He had an advantage 
 over some of His modern critics. I read the 
 scientific and sceptical literature of my time — 
 all of it, at least, that I could find written in 
 English and lying about ; and I read nothing 
 else ; I mean I read nothing else on any other 
 note of philosophy. The penny dreadfuls 
 which I also read were indeed in a healthy and 
 heroic tradition of Christianity ; but I did not 
 know this at the time. I never read a line 
 of Christian apologetics. I read as little as I 
 can of them now. It was Huxley and Herbert 
 Spencer and Bradlaugh who brought me back 
 to orthodox theology. They sowed in my mind 
 my first wild doubts of doubt. Our grand- 
 mothers were quite right when they said that 
 Tom Paine and the free-thinkers unsettled the 
 mind. They do. They unsettled mine hor- 
 ribly. The rationalist made me question 
 whether reason was of any use whatever ; and 
 when I had finished Herbert Spencer I had got 
 as far as doubting (for the first time) whether 
 evolution had occurred at all. As I laid down 
 the last of Colonel Ingersoll's atheistic lectures 
 the dreadful thought broke across my mind, 
 
 152 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian." 
 I was in a desperate way. 
 
 This odd effect of the great agnostics in 
 arousing doubts deeper than their own might 
 be illustrated in many ways. I take only one. 
 As I read and re-read all the non-Christian or 
 anti-Christian accounts of the faith, from 
 Huxley to Bradlaugh, a slow and awful impres- 
 sion grew gradually but graphically upon my 
 mind — the impression that Christianity must be 
 a most extraordinary thing. For not only (as 
 I understood) had Christianity the most flaming 
 vices, but it had apparently a mystical talent for 
 combining vices which seemed inconsistent with 
 each other. It was attacked on all sides and for 
 all contradictory reasons. No sooner had one 
 rationalist demonstrated that it was too far to 
 the east than another demonstrated with equal 
 clearness that it was much too far to the west. 
 No sooner had my indignation died down at its 
 angular and aggressive squareness than I was 
 called up again to notice and condemn its 
 enervating and sensual roundness. In case any 
 reader has not come across the thing I mean, 
 I will give such instances as I remember at 
 random of this self-contradiction in the sceptical 
 attack. I give four or five of them ; there are 
 fifty more. 
 
 IS3 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 Thus, for instance, I was much moved by 
 the eloquent attack on Christianity as a thing 
 of inhuman gloom ; for I thought (and still 
 think) sincere pessimism the unpardonable sin. 
 Insincere pessimism is a social accomplishment, 
 rather agreeable than otherwise ; and fortunately 
 nearly all pessimism is insincere. But if 
 Christianity was, as these people said, a thing 
 purely pessimistic and opposed to life, then I 
 was quite prepared to blow up St. Paul's 
 Cathedral. But the extraordinary thing is this. 
 They did prove to me in Chapter I. (to my 
 complete satisfaction) that Christianity was too 
 pessimistic ; and then, in Chapter II., they 
 began to prove to me that It was a great deal 
 too optimistic. One accusation against Chris- 
 tianity was that it prevented men, by morbid 
 tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty 
 In the bosom of Nature. But another accusa- 
 tion was that it comforted men with a fictitious 
 providence, and put them In a pink-and-white 
 nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature 
 was not beautiful enough, and why It was hard 
 to be free. Another great agnostic objected 
 that Christian optimism, " the garment of 
 make-believe woven by pious hands," hid from 
 us the fact that Nature was ugly, and that it 
 was Impossible to be free. One rationalist had 
 IS4 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare 
 before another began to call it a fool's paradise. 
 This puzzled me ; the charges seemed incon- 
 sistent. Christianity could not at once be the 
 black mask on a white world, and also the white 
 mask on a black world. The state of the 
 Christian could not be at once so comfortable 
 that he was a coward to cling to it, and so un- 
 comfortable that he was a fool to stand it. If 
 it falsified human vision it must falsify it one 
 way or another ; it could not wear both green 
 and rose-coloured spectacles. I rolled on my 
 tongue with a terrible joy, as did all young men 
 of that time, the taunts which Swinburne hurled 
 at the dreariness of the creed — 
 
 " Thou hast conquered, O pale Galileean, the world has grown 
 gray with Thy breath." 
 
 But when I read the same poet's accounts of 
 paganism (as in " Atalanta "), I gathered that 
 the world was, if possible, more gray before the 
 Galileean breathed on it than afterwards. The 
 poet maintained, indeed, in the abstract, that 
 life itself was pitch dark. And yet, somehow, 
 Christianity had darkened it. The very man 
 who denounced Christianity for pessimism was 
 himself a pessimist. I thought there must be 
 something wrong. And it did for one wild 
 
 15s 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 moment cross my mind that, perhaps, those 
 might not be the very best judges of the 
 relation of religion to happiness who, by their 
 own account, had neither one nor the other. 
 
 It must be understood that I did not con- 
 clude hastily that the accusations were false or 
 the accusers fools. I simply deduced that 
 Christianity must be something even weirder 
 and wickeder than they made out. A thing 
 might have these two opposite vices ; but it 
 must be a rather queer thing if it did. A man 
 might be too fat in one place and too thin in 
 another ; but he would be an odd shape. At 
 this point my thoughts were only of the odd 
 shape of the Christian religion ; I did not 
 allege any odd shape in the rationalistic mind. 
 
 Here is another case of the same kind. I felt 
 that a strong case against Christianity lay in the 
 charge that there is something timid, monkish, 
 and unmanly about all that is called " Christian," 
 especially in its attitude towards resistance and 
 fighting. The great sceptics of the nineteenth 
 century were largely virile. Bradlaugh in an 
 expansive way, Huxley in a reticent way, were 
 decidedly men. In comparison. It did seem 
 tenable that there was something weak and over 
 patient about Christian counsels. The Gospel 
 paradox about the other cheek, the fact that 
 156 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 priests never fought, a hundred things made 
 plausible the accusation that Christianity was an 
 attempt to make a man too like a sheep. I read 
 it and believed it, and if I had read nothing 
 different, I should have gone on believing it. 
 But I read something very different. I turned 
 the next page in my agnostic manual, and my 
 brain turned up-side down. Now I found that 
 I was to hate Christianity not for fighting too 
 little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, 
 it seemed, was the mother of wars, Christianity 
 had deluged the world with blood. I had got 
 thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he 
 never was angry. And now I was told to be 
 angry with him because his anger had been the 
 most huge and horrible thing in human history ; 
 because his anger had soaked the earth and 
 smoked to the sun. The very people who re- 
 proached Christianity with the meekness and 
 non-resistance of the monastries were the very 
 people who reproached it also with the violence 
 and valour of the Crusades. It was the fault of 
 poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both 
 that Edward the Confessor did not fight and 
 that Richard Cceur de Lion did. The Quakers 
 (we were told) were the only characteristic 
 Christians ; and yet the massacres of Cromwell 
 and Alva were characteristic Christian crimes. 
 
 157 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 What could it all mean ? What was this 
 Christianity which always forbade war and 
 always produced wars ? What could be the 
 nature of the thing which one could abuse first 
 because it would not fight, and second because it 
 was always fighting ? In what world of riddles 
 was born this monstrous murder and this mon- 
 strous meekness ? The shape of Christianity 
 grew a queerer shape every instant. 
 
 I take a third case ; the strangest of all, 
 because it involves the one real objection to the 
 faith. The one real objection to the Christian 
 religion is simply that it is one religion. The 
 world is a big place, full of very different kinds 
 of people. Christianity (it may reasonably be 
 said) is one thing confined to one kind of 
 people ; it began in Palestine, it has practically 
 stopped with Europe. I was duly impressed 
 with this argument in my youth, and I was 
 much drawn towards the doctrine often preached 
 in Ethical Societies — I mean the doctrine that 
 there is one great unconscious church of all 
 humanity founded on the omnipresence of 
 the human conscience. Creeds, it was said, 
 divided men ; but at least morals united them. 
 The soul might seek the strangest and most 
 remote lands and ages and still find essen- 
 tial ethical common sense. It might find 
 158 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 Confucius under Eastern trees, and he would 
 be writing " Thou shalt not steal." It might 
 decipher the darkest hieroglyphic on the 
 most primeval desert, and the meaning when 
 deciphered would be "Little boys should 
 tell the truth." I believed this doctrine 
 of the brotherhood of all men in the pos- 
 session of a moral sense, and I believe 
 it still — with other things. And I was 
 thoroughly annoyed with Christianity for 
 suggesting (as I supposed) that whole ages and 
 empires of men had utterly escaped this light 
 of justice and reason. But then I found an 
 astonishing thing. I found that the very 
 people who said that mankind was one church 
 from Plato to Emerson were the very people 
 who said that morality had changed altogether, 
 and that what was right in one age was wrong 
 in another. If I asked, say, for an altar, I 
 was told that we needed none, for men our 
 brothers gave us clear oracles and one creed in 
 their universal customs and ideals. But if I 
 mildly pointed out that one of men's universal 
 customs was to have an altar, then my agnostic 
 teachers turned clean round and told me that 
 men had always been in darkness and the 
 superstitions of savages. I found it was their 
 daily taunt against Christianity that it was the 
 
 JS9 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 light of one people and had left all others to 
 die in the dark. But I also found that it was 
 their special boast for themselves that science 
 and progress were the discovery of one people, 
 and that all other peoples had died in the dark. 
 Their chief insult to Christianity was actually 
 their chief compliment to themselves, and 
 there seemed to be a strange unfairness about 
 all their relative insistence on the two things. 
 When considering some pagan or agnostic, 
 we were to remember th^t all men had one 
 religion ; when considering some mystic or 
 spiritualist, we were only to consider what 
 absurd religions some men had. We could 
 trust the ethics of Epictetus, because ethics had 
 never changed. We must not trust the ethics 
 of Bossuet, because ethics had changed. They 
 changed in two hundred years, but not in two 
 thousand. 
 
 This began to be alarming. It looked not so 
 much as if Christianity was bad enough to 
 include any vices, but rather as if any stick was 
 good enough to beat Christianity with. What 
 again could this astonishing thing be like which 
 people were so anxious to contradict, that in 
 doing so they did not mind contradicting them- 
 selves ? I saw the same thing on every side. 
 I can give no further space to this discussion of 
 1 60 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 it in detail ; but lest any one supposes that I 
 have unfairly selected three accidental cases I 
 will run briefly through a few others. Thus, 
 certain sceptics wrote that the great crime of 
 Christianity had been its attack on the family ; 
 it had dragged women to the loneliness and 
 contemplation of the cloister, away from their 
 homes and their children. But, then, other 
 sceptics (slightly more advanced) said that the 
 great crime of Christianity was forcing the 
 family and marriage upon us ; that it doomed 
 women to the drudgery of their homes and 
 children, and forbade them loneliness and con- 
 templation. The charge was actually reversed. 
 Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the 
 Marriage Service, were said by the anti-Christians 
 to show contempt for woman's intellect. But 
 I found that the anti- Christians themselves 
 had a contempt for woman's intellect ; for it 
 was their great sneer at the Church on the 
 Continent that "only women " went to it. Or 
 again, Christianity was reproached with its 
 naked and hungry habits ; with its sackcloth 
 and dried peas. But the next minute Christi- 
 anity was being reproached with its pomp and 
 its ritualism ; its shrines of porphyry and its 
 robes of gold. It was abused for being too 
 plain and for being too coloured. Again 
 
 l6l L 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 Christianity had always been accused of restrain- 
 ing sexuality too much, when Bradlaugh the 
 Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too 
 litde. It is often accused in the same breath of 
 prim respectability and of religious extrava- 
 gance. Between the covers of the same athe- 
 istic pamphlet I have found the faith rebuked 
 for its disunion, " One thinks one thing, and 
 one another," and rebuked also for its union, 
 "It is difference of opinion that prevents the 
 world from, going to the dogs." In the same 
 conversation a free-thinker, a friend of mine, 
 blamed Christianity for despising Jews, and then 
 despised it himself for being Jewish. 
 
 I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish 
 to be quite fair now ; and I did not conclude 
 that the attack on Christianity was all wrong. 
 I only concluded that if Christianity was 
 wrong, it was very wrong indeed. Such 
 hostile horrors might be combined in one 
 thing, but that thing must be very strange 
 and solitary. There are men who are misers, 
 and also spendthrifts ; but they are rare. 
 There are men sensual and also ascetic ; but 
 they are rare. But if this mass of mad con- 
 tradictions really existed, quakerish and blood- 
 thirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, 
 austere, yet pandering preposterously to the 
 162 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 lust of the eye, the enemy of women and their 
 foolish refuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly 
 optimist, if this evil existed, then there was in 
 this evil something quite supreme and unique. 
 For I found in my rationalist teachers no 
 explanation of such exceptional corruption. 
 Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in 
 their eyes only one of the ordinary myths and 
 errors of mortals. They gave me no key to 
 this twisted and unnatural badness. Such a 
 paradox of evil rose to the stature of the 
 supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as super- 
 natural as the infallibility of the Pope. An 
 historic institution, which never went right, 
 is really quite as much of a miracle as an 
 institution that cannot go wrong. The only 
 explanation which immediately occurred to my 
 mind was that Christianity did not come from 
 heaven, but from hell. Really, if Jesus of 
 Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been 
 Antichrist. 
 
 And then in a quiet hour a strange thought 
 struck me like a still thunderbolt. There had 
 suddenly come into my mind another explana- 
 tion. Suppose we heard an unknown man 
 spoken of by many men. Suppose we were 
 puzzled to hear that some men said he was too 
 tall and some too short ; some objected to his 
 
 163 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 fatness, some lamented his leanness ; some 
 thought him too dark, and some too fair. One 
 explanation (as has been already admitted) 
 would be that he might be an odd shape. But 
 there is another explanation. He might be 
 the right shape. Outrageously tall men might 
 feel him to be short. Very short men might 
 feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing 
 stout might consider him insufficiently filled 
 out ; old beaux who were growing thin might 
 feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines 
 of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale 
 hair like tow) called him a dark man, while 
 negroes considered him distinctly blonde. 
 Perhaps (in short) this extraordinary thing is 
 really the ordinary thing ; at least the normal 
 thing, the centre. Perhaps, after all, it is Chris- 
 tianity that is sane and all its critics that are 
 mad — in various ways. I tested this idea by 
 asking myself whether there was about any of 
 the accusers anything morbid that might explain 
 the accusation. I was startled to find that this 
 key fitted a lock. For instance, it was certainly 
 odd that the modern world charged Christianity 
 at once with bodily austerity and with artistic 
 pomp. But then it was also odd, very odd, 
 that the modern world itself combined extreme 
 bodily luxury with an extreme absence of 
 164 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 artistic pomp. The modern man thought 
 Becket's robes too rich and his meals too poor. 
 But then the modern man was really exceptional 
 in history ; no man before ever ate such elabor- 
 ate dinners in such ugly clothes. The modern 
 man found the church too simple exactly where 
 modern life is too complex ; he found the 
 church too gorgeous exactly where modern 
 life is too dingy. The man who disliked the 
 plain fasts and feasts was mad on entries. The 
 man who disliked vestments wore a pair of 
 preposterous trousers. And surely if there was 
 any insanity involved in the matter at all it was 
 in the trousers, not in the simply falling robe. 
 If there was any insanity at all, it was in the 
 extravagant entries, not in the bread and wine. 
 
 I went over all the cases, and I found the 
 key fitted so far. The fact that Swinburne was 
 irritated at the unhappiness of Christians and 
 yet more irritated at their happiness was easily 
 explained. It was no longer a complication 
 of diseases in Christianity, but a complication 
 of diseases in Swinburne. The restraints of 
 Christians saddened him simply because he was 
 more hedonist than a healthy man should be. 
 The faith of Christians angered him because he 
 was more pessimist than a healthy man should 
 be. In the same way the Malthusians by instinct 
 
 X65 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 attacked Christianity ; not because there is any- 
 thing especially anti-Malthusian about Christi- 
 anity, but because there is something a little 
 anti-human about Malthusianism. 
 
 Nevertheless it could not, I felt, be quite 
 true that Christianity was merely sensible and 
 stood in the middle. There was really an 
 element in it of emphasis and even frenzy 
 which had justified the secularists in their 
 superficial criticism. It might be wise, I began 
 more and more to think that it was wise, but it 
 was not merely worldly wise ; it was not merely 
 temperate and respectable. Its fierce crusaders 
 and meek saints might balance each other ; still, 
 the crusaders were very fierce and the saints were 
 very meek, meek beyond all decency. Now, it 
 was just at this point of the speculation that I 
 remembered my thoughts about the martyr and 
 the suicide. In that matter there had been this 
 combination between two almost insane posi- 
 tions which yet somehow amounted to sanity. 
 This was just such another contradiction ; and 
 this I had already found to be true. This was 
 exactly one of the paradoxes in which sceptics 
 found the creed wrong ; and in this I had 
 found it right. Madly as Christians might love 
 the martyr or hate the suicide, they never felt 
 these passions more madly than I had felt them 
 
 i66 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 long before I dreamed of Christianity. Then 
 the most difficult and interesting part of the 
 mental process opened, and I began to trace 
 this idea darkly through all the enormous 
 thoughts of our theology. The idea was that 
 which I had outlined touching the optimist and 
 the pessimist ; that we want not an amalgam or 
 compromise, but both things at the top of their 
 energy ; love and wrath both burning. Here 
 I shall only trace it in relation to ethics. But 
 I need not remind the reader that the idea of 
 this combination is indeed central in orthodox 
 theology. For orthodox theology has specially 
 insisted that Christ was not a being apart from 
 God and man, like an elf, nor yet a being half 
 human and half not, like a centaur, but both 
 things at once and both things thoroughly, 
 very man and very God. Now let me trace 
 this notion as I found it. 
 
 All sane men can see that sanity is some 
 kind of equilibrium ; that one may be mad and 
 eat too much, or mad and eat too little. Some 
 moderns have indeed appeared with vague 
 versions of progress and evolution which seeks 
 to destroy the ixdaov or balance of Aristotle. 
 They seem to suggest that we are meant to 
 starve progressively, or to go on eating larger 
 and larger breakfasts every morning for ever. 
 
 167 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 But the great truism of the fiia-ov remains for 
 all thinking men, and these people have not 
 upset any balance except their own. But 
 granted that we have all to keep a balance, the 
 real interest comes in with the question of how 
 that balance can be kept. That was the 
 problem which Paganism tried to solve : that 
 was the problem which I think Christianity 
 solved and solved in a very strange way. 
 
 Paganism declared that virtue was in a 
 balance ; Christianity declared it was in a 
 conflict : the collision of two passions ap- 
 parently opposite. Of course they were not 
 really inconsistent ; but they were such that it 
 was hard to hold simultaneously. Let us follow 
 for a moment the clue of the martyr and 
 the suicide ; and take the case of courage. 
 No quality has ever so much addled the 
 brains and tangled the definitions of merely 
 rational sages. Courage is almost a contradic- 
 tion in terms. It means a strong desire to live 
 taking the form of a readiness to die. " He 
 that will lose his life, the same shall save it," 
 is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. 
 It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors 
 or mountaineers. It might be printed in an 
 Alpine guide or a drill book. This paradox is 
 the whole principle of courage ; even of quite 
 i68 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off 
 by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on 
 the precipice. He can only get away from 
 death by continually stepping within an inch 
 of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he 
 is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong 
 desire for living with a strange carelessness 
 about dying. He must not merely cling to 
 life, for then he will be a coward, and will not 
 escape. He must not merely wait for death, 
 for then he wUl be a suicide, and will not 
 escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of 
 furious indifference to it ; he must desire life 
 like water and yet drink death like wine. No 
 philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this 
 romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I 
 certainly have not done so. But Christianity 
 has done more : it has marked the limits of it 
 in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, 
 showing the distance between him who dies for 
 the sake of living and him who dies for the 
 sake of dying. And it has held up ever since 
 above the European lances the banner of the 
 mystery of chivalry : the Christian courage, 
 which is a disdain of death ; not the Chinese 
 courage, which is a disdain of life. 
 
 And now I began to find that this duplex pasy 
 sion was the Christian key to ethics everywhere/. 
 
 169 / 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 Everywhere the creed made a moderation out 
 of the still crash of two impetuous emotions. 
 Take, for instance, the matter of modesty, 
 of the balance between mere pride and mere 
 prostration. The average pagan, like the 
 average agnostic, would merely say that he was 
 content with himself, but not insolently self- 
 satisfied, that there were many better and many 
 worse, that his deserts were limited, but he 
 would see that he got them. In short, he 
 would walk with his head in the air ; but not 
 necessarily with his nose in the air. This is a 
 manly and rational position, but it is open to 
 the objection we noted against the compromise 
 between optimism and pessimism — the " re- 
 signation " of Matthew Arnold. Being a 
 mixture of two things, it is a dilution of two 
 things ; neither is present in its full strength or 
 contributes its full colour. This proper pride 
 does not lift the heart like the tongue of 
 trumpets ; you cannot go clad in crimson and 
 gold for this. On the other hand, this mild 
 rationalist modesty does not cleanse the soul 
 with fire and make it clear like crystal ; it does 
 not (like a strict and searching humiHty) make 
 Na man as a little child, who can sit at the feet of 
 tne grass. It does not make him look up and see 
 nkrvels ; for Alice must grow small if she is to 
 \ 170 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 be Alice in Wonderland. Thus it loses both 
 the poetry of being proud and the poetry of 
 being humble. Christianity sought by this 
 same strange expedient to save both of them. 
 
 It separated the two ideas and then exag- 
 gerated them both. In one way Man was to 
 be haughtier than he had ever been before ; in 
 another way he was to be humbler than he had 
 ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am 
 the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man 
 I am the chief of sinners. All humility that 
 had meant pessimism, that had meant man 
 taking a vague or mean view of his whole 
 destiny — all that was to go. We were to hear 
 no more the wail of Ecclesiastes that humanity 
 had no pre-eminence over the brute, or the 
 awful cry of Homer that man was only the 
 saddest of all the beasts of the field. Man was 
 a statue of God walking about the garden. 
 Man had pre-eminence over all the brutes ; 
 man was only sad because he was not a beast, 
 but a broken god. The Greek had spoken of 
 men creeping on the earth, as if clinging to it. 
 Now Man was to tread on the earth as if to sub- 
 due it. Christianity thus held a thought of the 
 dignity of man that could only be expressed in 
 crowns rayed like the sun and fans of peacock 
 plumage. Yet at the same time it could hold 
 
 171 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 a thought about the abject smallness of man 
 that could only be expressed in fasting and 
 fantastic submission, in the grey ashes of St. 
 Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. 
 When one came to think of one's self, there was 
 vista and void enough for any amount of bleak 
 abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic 
 gentleman could let himself go — as long as he 
 let himself go at himself. There was an open 
 playground for the happy pessimist. Let 
 him say anything against himself short of 
 blaspheming the original aim of his being ; let 
 him call himself a fool and even a damned fool 
 (though that is Calvinistic) ; but he must not 
 say that fools are not worth saving. He must 
 not say that a man, qud man, can be valueless. 
 Here again, in short, Christianity got over the 
 difficulty of combining furious opposites, by 
 keeping them both, and keeping them both 
 furious. The Church was positive on both 
 points. One can hardly think too little of 
 one's self. One can hardly think too much of 
 one's soul. 
 
 Take another case : the complicated question 
 of charity, which some highly uncharitable 
 idealists seem to think quite easy. Charity is 
 a paradox, like modesty and courage. Stated 
 baldly, charity certainly means one of two 
 172 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 things — pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving 
 unlovable people. But if we ask ourselves 
 (as we did in the case of pride) what a sensible 
 pagan would feel about such a subject, we 
 shall probably be beginning at the bottom 
 of it. A sensible pagan would say that there 
 were some people one could forgive, and some 
 one couldn't : a slave who stole wine could be 
 laughed at ; a slave who betrayed his bene- 
 factor could be killed, and cursed even after 
 he was killed. In so far as the act was pardon- 
 able, the man was pardonable. That again is 
 rational, and even refreshing ; but it is a 
 dilution. It leaves no place for a pure horror 
 of injustice, such as that which is a great beauty 
 in the innocent. And it leaves no place for a 
 mere tenderness for men as men, such as is the 
 whole fascination of the charitable. Christianity 
 came in here as before. It came in stardingly 
 with a sword, and clove one thing from another. 
 It divided the crime from the criminal. The 
 criminal we must forgive unto seventy times 
 seven. The crime we must not forgive at all. 
 It was not enough that slaves who stole wine 
 inspired partly anger and partly kindness. We 
 must be much more angry with theft than 
 before, and yet much kinder to thieves than 
 before. There was room for wrath and love 
 
 173 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 to run wild. And the more I considered 
 Christianity, the more I found that while it had 
 established a rule and order, the chief aim of 
 that order was to give room for good things 
 to run wild. 
 
 Mental and emotional liberty are not so 
 simple as they look. Really they require 
 almost as careful a balance of laws and condi- 
 tions as do social and political liberty. The 
 ordinary aesthetic anarchist who sets out to 
 feel everything freely gets knotted at last in a 
 paradox that prevents him feeling at all. He 
 breaks away from home limits to follow poetry. 
 But in ceasing to feel home limits he has ceased 
 to feel the "Odyssey." He is free from 
 national prejudices and outside patriotism. 
 But being outside patriotism he is outside 
 " Henry V." Such a literary man is simply 
 outside all literature : he is more of a prisoner 
 than any bigot. For if there is a wall between 
 you and the world, it makes little difference 
 whether you describe yourself as locked in or 
 as locked out. What we want is not the 
 universality that is outside all normal senti- 
 ments ; we want the universality that is inside 
 all normal sentiments. It is all the difference 
 between being free from them, as a man is free 
 from a prison, and being free of them as a 
 174 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 man is free of a city. I am free from Windsor 
 Castle (that is, 1 am not forcibly detained 
 there), but I am by no means free of that 
 building. How can man be approximately 
 free of fine emotions, able to swing them 
 in a clear space without breakage or wrong ? 
 This was the achievement of this Christian 
 paradox of the parallel passions. Granted the 
 primary dogma of the war between divine 
 and diabolic, the revolt and ruin of the 
 world, their optimism and pessimism, as pure 
 poetry, could be loosened like cataracts. 
 
 St. Francis, in praising all good, could be a 
 more shouting optimist than Walt Whitman. 
 St. Jerome, in denouncing all evil, could paint 
 the world blacker than Schopenhauer. Both 
 passions were free because both were kept in 
 their place. The optimist could pour out all 
 the praise he liked on the gay music of the 
 march, the golden trumpets, and the purple 
 banners going into battle. But he must not call 
 the fight needless. The pessimist might draw as 
 darkly as he chose the sickening marches or the 
 sanguine wounds. But he must not call the fight 
 hopeless. So it was with all the other moral 
 problems, with pride, with protest, and with 
 compassion. By defining its main doctrine, the 
 Church not only kept seemingly inconsistent 
 
 175 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 things side by side, but, what was more, 
 allowed them to break out in a sort of artistic 
 violence otherwise possible only to anarchists. 
 Meekness grew more dramatic than madness. 
 Historic Christianity rose into a high and strange 
 coup de thiatre of morality — things that are to 
 virtue what the crimes of Nero are to vice. 
 The spirits of indignation and of charity took 
 terrible and attractive forms, ranging from that 
 monkish fierceness that scourged like a dog the 
 first and greatest of the Plantagenets, to the sub- 
 lime pity of St. Catherine, who, in the official 
 shambles, kissed the bloody head of the criminal. 
 Poetry could be acted as well as composed. 
 This heroic and monumental manner in ethics 
 has entirely vanished with supernatural religion. 
 They, being humble, could parade themselves ; 
 but we are too proud to be prominent. Our 
 ethical teachers write reasonably for prison 
 reform ; but we are not likely to see Mr. 
 Cadbury, or any eminent philanthropist, go 
 into Reading Gaol and embrace the strangled 
 corpse before it is cast into the quicklime. 
 Our ethical teachers write mildly against the 
 power of millionaires ; but we are not likely to 
 see Mr. Rockefeller, or any modern tyrant, 
 publicly whipped in Westminster Abbey. 
 Thus, the double charges of the secularists, 
 176 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 though throwing nothing but darkness and 
 
 confusion on themselves, throw a real light 
 
 on the faith. It is true that the historic Church 
 
 has at once emphasised celibacy and emphasised 
 
 the family ; has at once (if one may put it so) 
 
 been fiercely for having children and fiercely 
 
 for not having children. It has kept them 
 
 side by side like two strong colours, red and 
 
 white, like the red and white upon the shield 
 
 of St. George. It has always had a healthy 
 
 hatred of pink. It hates that combination of 
 
 two colours which is the feeble expedient of 
 
 the philosophers. It hates that evolution 
 
 of black into white which is tantamount to 
 
 a dirty grey. In fact, the whole theory of 
 
 the Church on virginity might be symbolized 
 
 in the statement that white is a colour : not 
 
 merely the absence of a colour. All that I am 
 
 urging here can be expressed by saying that 
 
 Christianity sought in most of these cases to 
 
 keep two colours co-existent but pure. It is 
 
 not a mixture like russet or purple ; it is rather 
 
 like a shot silk, for a shot silk is always at right 
 
 angles, and is in the pattern of the cross. 
 
 So it is also, of course, with the contradictory 
 charges of the anti-Christians about submission 
 and slaughter. It is true that the Church told 
 some men to fight and others not to fight ; 
 
 177 M 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 and it is true that those who fought were like 
 thunderbolts and those who did not fight were like 
 statues. All this simply means that the Church 
 preferred to use its Supermen and to use its 
 Tolstoyans. There must be some good in the 
 life of battle, for so many good men have 
 enjoyed being soldiers. There must be some 
 good in the idea of non-resistance, for so many 
 good men seem to enjoy being Quakers. 
 All that the Church did (so far as that goes) 
 was to prevent either of these good things 
 from ousting the other. They existed side 
 by side. The Tolstoyans, having all the 
 scruples of monks, simply became monks. 
 The Quakers became a club instead of becoming 
 a sect. Monks said all that Tolstoy says ; 
 they poured out lucid lamentations about the 
 cruelty of battles and the vanity of revenge. 
 But the Tolstoyans are not quite right enough 
 to run the whole world ; and in the ages of 
 faith they were not allowed to run it. The 
 world did not lose the last charge of Sir James 
 Douglas or the banner of Joan the Maid. And 
 sometimes this pure gentleness and this pure 
 fierceness met and justified their juncture ; 
 the paradox of all the prophets was fulfilled, 
 and, in the soul of St. Louis, the lion lay 
 down with the lamb. But remember that 
 178 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 this text is too lightly interpreted. It is 
 constantly assured, especially in our Tolstoyan 
 tendencies, that when the lion lies down with 
 the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that 
 is brutal annexation and imperialism on the 
 part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb 
 absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the 
 lamb. The real problem is — Can the lion lie 
 down with the lamb and still retain his royal 
 ferocity ? That is the problem the Church 
 attempted ; that is the miracle she achieved. 
 
 This is what I have called guessing the 
 hidden eccentricities of life. This is knowing 
 that a man's heart is to the left and not in the 
 middle. This is knowing not only that the 
 earth is round, but knowing exactly where it is 
 flat. Christian doctrine detected the oddities of 
 life. It not only discovered the law, but it 
 foresaw the exceptions. Those underrate Chris- 
 tianity who say that it discovered mercy ; any 
 one might discover mercy. In fact every one 
 did. But to discover a plan for being merciful 
 and also severe — that was to anticipate a strange 
 need of human nature. For no one wants to 
 be forgiven for a big sin as if it were a little one. 
 Any one might say that we should be neither 
 quite miserable nor quite happy. But to find 
 out how far one may be quite miserable without 
 
 179 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 making it impossible to be quite happy — 
 that was a discovery in psychology. Any one 
 might say, " Neither swagger nor grovel " ; and 
 it would have been a limit. But to say, " Here 
 you can swagger and there you can grovel " — 
 that was an emancipation. 
 
 This was the big fact about Christian ethics ; 
 the discovery of the new balance. Paganism 
 had been like a pillar of marble, upright because 
 proportioned with symmetry. Christianity was 
 like a huge and ragged and romantic rock, 
 which, though it sways on its pedestal at a 
 touch, yet, because its exaggerated excrescences 
 exactly balance each other, is enthroned there 
 for a thousand years. In a Gothic cathedral 
 the columns were all different, but they were 
 all necessary. Every support seemed an acci- 
 dental and fantastic support ; every buttress 
 was a flying buttress. So in Christendom 
 apparent accidents balanced. Becket wore a 
 hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and 
 there is much to be said for the combination ; 
 for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt 
 while the people in the street got the benefit of 
 the crimson and gold. It is at least better than 
 the manner of the modern millionaire, who has 
 the black and the drab outwardly for others, 
 and the gold next his heart. But the balance 
 
 i8o 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 was not always in one man's body as in 
 Becket's ; the balance was often distributed 
 over the whole body of Christendom. Because 
 a man prayed and fasted on the Northern 
 snows, flowers could be flung at his festival 
 in the Southern cities ; and because fanatics 
 drank water on the sands of Syria, men 
 could still drink cider in the orchards of 
 England. This is what makes Christendom 
 at once so much more perplexing and so much 
 more interesting than the Pagan empire ; just 
 as Amiens Cathedral is not better but more 
 interesting than the Parthenon. If any one 
 wants a modern proof of all this, let him 
 consider the curious fact that, under Christi- 
 anity, Europe (while remaining a unity) has 
 broken up into individual nations. Patriotism 
 is a perfect example of this deliberate balancing 
 of one emphasis against another emphasis. 
 The instinct of the Pagan empire would have 
 said, " You shall all be Roman citizens, and 
 grow alike ; let the German grow less slow and 
 reverent ; the Frenchmen less experimental 
 and swift." But the instinct of Christian 
 Europe says, "Let the German remain slow 
 and reverent, that the Frenchman may the 
 more safely be swift and experimental. We 
 will make an equipoise out of these excesses. 
 
 i8i 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 The absurdity called Germany shall correct the 
 insanity called France." 
 
 Last and most important, it is exactly this 
 which explains what is so inexplicable to all 
 the modern critics of the history of Christi- 
 anity. I mean the monstrous wars about small 
 points of theology, the earthquakes of emotion 
 about a gesture or a word. It was only a 
 matter of an inch ; but an inch is everything 
 when you are balancing. The Church could 
 not afford to swerve a hair's breadth on some 
 things if she was to continue her great and 
 daring experiment of the irregular equilibrium. 
 Once let one idea become less powerful and 
 some other idea would become too powerful. 
 It was no flock of sheep the Christian shepherd 
 was leading, but a herd of bulls and tigers, of 
 terrible ideals and devouring doctrines, each 
 one of them strong enough to turn to a false 
 religion and lay waste the world. Remember 
 that the Church went in specifically for dan- 
 gerous ideas ; she was a lion tamer. The idea 
 of birth through a Holy Spirit, of the 
 death of a divine being, of the forgiveness 
 of sins, or the fulfilment of prophecies, are 
 ideas which, any one can see, need but a 
 touch to turn them into something blasphemous 
 or ferocious. The smallest link was let drop 
 182 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 by the artificers of the Mediterranean, and the 
 lion of ancestral pessimism burst his chain in 
 the forgotten forests of the north. Of these 
 theological equalisations I have to speak after- 
 wards. Here it is enough to notice that if 
 some small mistake were made in doctrine, 
 huge blunders might be made in human 
 happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about 
 the nature of symbolism would have broken 
 all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the 
 definitions might stop all the dances ; might 
 wither all the Christmas trees or break all the 
 Easter eggs. Doctrines had to be defined 
 within strict limits, even in order that man 
 might enjoy general human liberties. The 
 Church had to be careful, if only that the 
 world might be careless. 
 
 This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. 
 People have fallen into a foolish habit of speak- 
 ing of orthodoxy as something heavy, hum- 
 drum, and safe. There never was anything so 
 perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy. It was 
 sanity : and to be sane is more dramatic than 
 to be mad. It was the equilibrium of a man 
 behind madly rushing horses, seeming to stoop 
 this way and to sway that, yet in every attitude 
 having the grace of statuary and the accuracy of 
 arithmetic. The Church in its early days went 
 
 183 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 fierce and fast with any warhorse ; yet it is 
 utterly unhistoric to say that she merely went 
 mad along one idea, like a vulgar fanaticism. 
 She swerved to left and right, so as exactly to 
 avoid enormous obstacles. She left on one hand 
 the huge bulk of Arianism, buttressed by all 
 the worldly powers to make Christianity too 
 worldly. The next instant she was swerving to 
 avoid an orientalism, which would have made it 
 too unworldly. The orthodox Church never took 
 the tame course or accepted the conventions ; 
 the orthodox Church was never respectable. It 
 would have been easier to have accepted the 
 earthly power of the Arians. It would have 
 been easy, in the Calvinistic seventeenth century, 
 to fall into the bottomless pit of predestination. 
 It is easy to be a madman : it is easy to be a 
 heretic. It is always easy to let the age have 
 its head ; the difficult thing is to keep one's 
 own. It is always easy to be a modernist ; as 
 it is easy to be a snob. To have fallen into any 
 of those open traps of error and exaggeration 
 which fashion after fashion and sect after sect 
 set along the historic path of Christendom — 
 that would indeed have been simple. It is 
 always simple to fall ; there are an infinity of 
 angles at which one falls, only one at which 
 one stands. To have fallen into any one of 
 184 
 
The Paradoxes of Christianity 
 
 the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science 
 would indeed have been obvious and tame. 
 But to have avoided them all has been one 
 whirling adventure ; and in my vision the 
 heavenly chariot flies thundering through the 
 ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, 
 the wild truth reeling but erect. 
 
 185 
 
Chapter VII — The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 THE following propositions have been 
 urged : First, that some faith in 
 our life is required even to im- 
 prove it ; second, that some dis- 
 satisfaction with things as they are is necessary 
 even in order to be satisfied ; third, that to have 
 this necessary content and necessary discontent 
 it is not sufficient to have the obvious equili- 
 brium of the Stoic. For mere resignation has 
 neither the gigantic levity of pleasure nor the 
 superb intolerance of pain. There is a vital 
 objection to the advice merely to grin and bear 
 it. The objection is that if you merely bear it, 
 you do not grin. Greek heroes do not grin ; 
 but gargoyles do — because they are Christian. 
 And when a Christian is pleased, he is (in the 
 most exact sense) frightfully pleased ; his plea- 
 sure is frightful. Christ prophesied the whole 
 of Gothic architecture in that hour when nervous 
 and respectable people (such people as now object 
 to barrel organs) objected to the shouting of the 
 gutter-snipes of Jerusalem. He said, " If these 
 were silent, the very stones would cry out." 
 Under the impulse of His spirit arose like 
 a clamorous chorus the fa9ades of the mediaeval 
 
 i86 
 
The Eternal Revolution 
 
 cathedrals, thronged with shouting faces and 
 open mouths. The prophecy has fulfilled itself : 
 the very stones cry out. 
 
 If these things be conceded, though only for 
 argument, we may take up where we left it the 
 thread of the thought of the natural man, called 
 by the Scotch (with regrettable familiarity), 
 " The Old Man." We can ask the next ques- 
 tion so obviously in front of us. Some satis- 
 faction is needed even to make things better. 
 But what do we mean by making things better ? 
 Most modern talk on this matter is a mere 
 argvmient in a circle — that circle which we have 
 already made the symbol of madness and of 
 mere rationalism. Evolution is only good if it 
 produces good ; good is only good if it helps 
 evolution. The elephant stands on the tortoise, 
 and the tortoise on the elephant. 
 
 Obviously, it will not do to take our ideal from 
 the principle in nature ; for the simple reason 
 that (except for some human or divine theory), 
 there is no principle in nature. For instance, 
 the cheap anti-democrat of to-day wiU teU you 
 solemnly that there is no equality in nature. 
 He is right, but he does not see the logical 
 addendum. There is no equality in nature ; 
 also there is no inequality in nature. Inequality, 
 as much as equality, implies a standard of value. 
 
 187 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 To read aristocracy into the anarchy of animals is 
 just as sentimental as to read democracy into it. 
 Both aristocracy and democracy are human 
 ideals : the one saying that all men are valuable, 
 the other that some men are more valuable. 
 But nature does not say that cats are more 
 valuable than mice ; nature makes no remark 
 on the subject. She does not even say that the 
 cat is enviable or the mouse pitiable. We think 
 the cat superior because we have (or most of us 
 have) a particular philosophy to the effect that 
 life is better than death. But if the mouse 
 were a German pessimist mouse, he might not 
 think that the cat had beaten him at all. He 
 might think he had beaten the cat by getting to 
 the grave first. Or he might feel that he had 
 actually inflicted frightful punishment on the 
 cat by keeping him alive. Just as a microbe 
 might feel proud of spreading a pestilence, so 
 the pessimistic mouse might exult to think 
 that he was renewing in the cat the torture of 
 conscious existence. It all depends on the 
 philosophy of the mouse. You cannot even 
 say that there is victory or superiority in nature 
 unless you have some doctrine about what 
 things are superior. You cannot even say 
 that the cat scores unless there is a system 
 of scoring. You cannot even say that the cat 
 1 88 
 
The Eternal Revolution 
 
 gets the best of it unless there is some best 
 to be got. 
 
 We cannot, then, get the ideal itself from 
 nature, and as we follow here the first and 
 natural speculation, we will leave out (for the 
 present) the idea of getting it from God. We 
 must have our own vision. But the attempts of 
 most moderns to express it are highly vague. 
 
 Some fall back simply on the clock : they 
 talk as if mere passage through time brought 
 some superiority ; so that even a man of the 
 first mental calibre carelessly uses the phrase that 
 human morality is never up to date. How can 
 anything be up to date ? a date has no character. 
 How can one say that Christmas celebrations 
 are not suitable to the twenty-fifth of a month ? 
 What the writer meant, of course, was that the 
 majority is behind his favourite minority — or in 
 front of it. Other vague modern people take 
 refuge in material metaphors ; in fact, this is 
 the chief mark of vague modern people. Not 
 daring to define their doctrine of what is good, 
 they use physical figures of speech without stint 
 or shame, and, what is worst of all, seem to 
 think these cheap analogies are exquisitely 
 spiritual and superior to the old morality. 
 Thus they think it intellectual to talk about 
 things being " high." It is at least the reverse 
 
 189 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 of intellectual ; it is a mere phrase from a 
 steeple or a weathercock. "Tommy was a 
 good boy " is a pure philosophical statement, 
 worthy of Plato or Aquinas. "Tommy lived 
 the higher life " is a gross metaphor from a 
 ten-foot rule. 
 
 This, incidentally, is almost the whole weak- 
 ness of Nietzsche, whom some are representing 
 as a bold and strong thinker. No one will 
 deny that he was a poetical and suggestive 
 thinker ; but he was quite the reverse of strong. 
 He was not at all bold. He never put his own 
 meaning before himself in bald abstract words : 
 as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl 
 Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. 
 Nietzsche always escaped a question by a 
 physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. 
 He said, " beyond good and evil," because he 
 had not the courage to say, " more good than 
 good and evil," or, " more evil than good and 
 evil." Had he faced his thought without 
 metaphors, he would have seen that it was 
 nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he 
 does not dare to say, "the purer man," or 
 " the happier man," or " the sadder man," for 
 all these are ideas ; and ideas are alarming. 
 He says " the upper man," or " over man," a 
 physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine 
 190 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid 
 thinker. He does not really know in the least 
 what sort of man he wants evolution to produce. 
 And if he does not know, certainly the ordinary 
 evolutionists, who talk about things being 
 " higher," do not know either. 
 
 Then again, some people fall back on sheer 
 submission and sitting still. Nature is going 
 to do something some day ; nobody knows 
 what, and nobody knows when. We have no 
 reason for acting, and no reason for not acting. 
 If anything happens it is right : if anything is 
 prevented it was wrong. Again, some people 
 try to anticipate nature by doing something, by 
 doing anything. Because we may possibly 
 grow wings they cut off their legs. Yet nature 
 may be trying to make them centipedes for all 
 they know. 
 
 Lastly, there is a fourth class of people who 
 take whatever it is that they happen to want, 
 and say that that is the ultimate aim of 
 evolution. And these are the only sensible 
 people. This is the only really healthy way 
 with the word evolution, to work for what you 
 want, and to call that evolution. The only 
 intelligible sense that progress or advance can 
 have among men, is that we have a definite 
 vision, and that we wish to make the whole 
 
 191 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 world like that vision. If you like to put it so, 
 the essence of the doctrine is that what we 
 have around us is the mere method and pre- 
 paration for something that we have to create. 
 This is not a world, but rather the materials 
 for a world. God has given us not so much 
 the colours of a picture as the colours of a 
 palette. But He has also given us a subject, a 
 model, a fixed vision. We must be clear about 
 what we want to paint. This adds a further 
 principle to our previous list of principles. 
 We have said we must be fond of this world, 
 even in order to change it. We now add that 
 we must be fond of another world (real or 
 imaginary) in order to have something to 
 change it to. 
 
 We need not debate about the mere words 
 evolution or progress : personally I prefer to 
 call it reform. For reform implies form. It 
 implies that we are trying to shape the world 
 in a particular image ; to make it something 
 that we see already in our minds. Evolution 
 is a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling. 
 Progress is a metaphor from merely walking 
 along a road — very likely the wrong road. But 
 reform is a metaphor for reasonable and 
 determined men : it means that we see a 
 certain thing out of shape and we mean 
 192 
 
The Eternal Revolution 
 
 to put it into shape. And we know what 
 shape. 
 
 Now here comes in the whole collapse and 
 huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up 
 two different things, two opposite things. Pro- 
 gress should mean that we are always changing 
 the world to suit the vision. Progress does 
 mean (just now) that we are always changing 
 the vision. It should mean that we are slow 
 but sure in bringing justice and mercy among 
 men : it does mean that we are very swift in 
 doubting the desirability of justice and mercy : 
 a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes 
 men doubt it. Progress should mean that we 
 are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. 
 It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always 
 walking away from us. We are not altering 
 the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the 
 ideal : it is easier. 
 
 Silly examples are always simpler ; let us 
 suppose a man wanted a particular kind of 
 world ; say, a blue world. He would have no 
 cause to complain of the slightness or swiftness 
 of his task ; he might toil for a long time at 
 the transformation ; he could work away (in 
 every sense) until all was blue. He could have 
 heroic adventures ; the putting of the last 
 touches to a blue tiger. He could have fairy 
 
 193 N 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 dreams ; the dawn of a blue moon. But if he 
 worked hard, that high-minded reformer would 
 certainly (from his own point of view) leave the 
 world better and bluer than he found it. If he 
 altered a blade of grass to his favourite colour 
 every day, he would get on slowly. But if he 
 altered his favourite colour every day, he would 
 not get on at all. If, after reading a fresh 
 philosopher, he started to paint everything red 
 or yellow, his work would be thrown away : 
 there would be nothing to show except a few 
 blue tigers walking about, specimens of his 
 early bad manner. This is exactly the position 
 of the average modern thinker. It will be said 
 that this is avowedly a preposterous example. 
 But it is literally the fact of recent history. 
 The great and grave changes in our political 
 civilization all belonged to the early nineteenth 
 century, not to the later. They belonged to the 
 black and white epoch when men believed 
 fixedly in Toryism, in Protestantism, in Cal- 
 vinism, in Reform, and not unfrequently in 
 Revolution. And whatever each man believed 
 in he hammered at steadily, without scepticism : 
 and there was a time when the Established 
 Church might have fallen, and the House of 
 Lords nearly fell. It was because Radicals were 
 wise enough to be constant and consistent ; it 
 194 
 
The Eternal Revolution 
 
 was because Radicals were wise enough to be 
 Conservative. But in the existing atmosphere 
 there is not enough time and tradition in Radi- 
 calism to pull anything down. There is a great 
 deal of truth in Lord Hugh Cecil's suggestion 
 (made in a fine speech) that the era of change is 
 over, and that ours is an era of conservation 
 and repose. But probably it would pain Lord 
 Hugh Cecil if he realised (what is certainly the 
 case) that ours is only an age of conservation 
 because it is an age of complete unbelief. Let 
 beliefs fade fast and frequently, if you wish 
 institutions to remain the same. The more the 
 life of the mind is unhinged, the more the 
 machinery of matter will be left to itself. The 
 net result of all our political suggestions. Col- 
 lectivism, Tolstoyanism, Neo-Feudalism, Com- 
 munism, Anarchy, Scientific Bureaucracy — the 
 plain fruit of all of them is that the Monarchy 
 and the House of Lords will remain. The net 
 result of all the new religions will be that the 
 Church of England will not (for heaven knows 
 how long) be disestablished. It was Karl 
 Marx, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Cunninghame Gra- 
 hame, Bernard Shaw and Auberon Herbert, 
 who between them, with bowed gigantic backs, 
 bore up the throne of the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. 
 
 195 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 We may say broadly that free thought is 
 the best of all the safeguards against freedom. 
 Managed in a modern style the emancipation 
 of the slave's mind is the best way of pre- 
 venting the emancipation of the slave. Teach 
 him to worry about whether he wants to be 
 free, and he will not free himself. Again, it 
 may be said that this instance is remote or 
 extreme. But, again, it is exactly true of the 
 men in the streets around us. It is true that 
 the negro slave, being a debased barbarian, will 
 probably have either a human affection of 
 loyalty, or a human affection for liberty. But 
 the man we see every day — the worker in 
 Mr. Gradgrlnd's factory, the little clerk in Mr. 
 Gradgrind's office — he is too mentally worried 
 to believe in freedom. He is kept quiet with 
 revolutionary literature. He is calmed and 
 kept in his place by a constant succession of 
 wild philosophies. He is a Marxian one day, 
 a Nietzscheite the next day, a Superman (prob- 
 ably) the next day ; and a slave every day. 
 The only thing that remains after all the 
 philosophies is the factory. The only man 
 who gains by all the philosophies is Gradgrind. 
 It would be worth his while to keep his com- 
 mercial helotry supplied with sceptical litera- 
 ture. And now I come to think of it, of 
 196 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 course, Gradgrind is famous for giving libraries. 
 He shows his sense. All modern books are 
 on his side. As long as the vision of heaven 
 is always changing, the vision of earth will be 
 exactly the same. No ideal will remain long 
 enough to be realised, or even partly realised. 
 The modern young man will never change 
 his environment ; for he will always change 
 his mind. 
 
 This, therefore, is our first requirement about 
 the ideal towards which progress is directed ; 
 it must be fixed. Whistler used to make many 
 rapid studies of a sitter ; it did not matter if he 
 tore up twenty portraits. But it would matter 
 if he looked up twenty times, and each time 
 saw a new person sitting placidly for his portrait. 
 So it does not matter (comparatively speaking) 
 how often humanity fails to imitate its ideal ; 
 for then all its old failures are fruitful. But it 
 does frightfully matter how often humanity 
 changes its ideal ; for then all its old failures are 
 fruitless. The question therefore becomes this : 
 How can we keep the artist discontented with 
 his pictures while preventing him from being 
 vitally discontented with his art ? How can we 
 make a man always dissatisfied with his work, 
 yet always satisfied with working ? How can 
 we make sure that the portrait painter will 
 
 197 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 throw the portrait out of window instead of 
 taking the natural and more human course of 
 throwing the sitter out of window ? 
 
 A strict rule is not only necessary for ruling ; 
 it is also necessary for rebelling. This fixed 
 and familiar ideal is necessary to any sort of 
 revolution. Man will sometimes act slowly 
 upon new ideas ; but he will only act swiftly 
 upon old ideas. If I am merely to float or 
 fade or evolve, it may be towards something 
 anarchic ; but if I am to riot, it must be for 
 something respectable. This is the whole 
 weakness of certain schools of progress and 
 moral evolution. They suggest that there has 
 been a slow movement towards morality, with 
 an imperceptible ethical change in every year 
 or at every instant. There is only one great 
 disadvantage in this theory. It talks of a slow 
 movement towards justice ; but it does not 
 permit a swift movement. A man is not 
 allowed to leap up and declare a certain state 
 of things to be intrinsically intolerable. To 
 make the matter clear, it is better to take a 
 specific example. Certain of the idealistic 
 vegetarians, such as Mr. Salt, say that the time 
 has now come for eating no meat ; by implica- 
 tion they assume that at one time it was right 
 to eat meat, and they suggest (in words that 
 
 198 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 could be quoted) that some day it may be 
 wrong to eat milk and eggs. I do not discuss 
 here the question of what is justice to animals. 
 I only say that whatever is justice ought, under 
 given conditions, to be prompt justice. If an 
 animal is wronged, we ought to be able to 
 rush to his rescue. But how can we rush if we 
 are, perhaps, in advance of our time ^ How 
 can we rush to catch a train which may not 
 arrive for a few centuries ? How can I denounce 
 a man for skinning cats, if he is only now what 
 I may possibly become in drinking a glass of 
 milk ? A splendid and insane Russian sect 
 ran about taking all the cattle out of all the 
 carts. How can I pluck up courage to take 
 the horse out of my hansom-cab, when I do 
 not know whether my evolutionary watch is 
 only a little fast or the cabman's a little slow ? 
 Suppose I say to a sweater, "Slavery suited 
 one stage of evolution." And suppose he 
 answers, "And sweating suits this stage of 
 evolution." How can I answer if there is no 
 eternal test? If sweaters can be behind the 
 current morality, why should not philanthro- 
 pists be in front of it ? What on earth is the 
 current morality, except in its literal sense — 
 the morality that is always running away ? 
 Thus we may say that a permanent ideal is 
 199 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 as necessary to the innovator as to the conserva- 
 tive ; it is necessary whether we wish the king's 
 orders to be promptly executed or whether we 
 only wish the king to be promptly executed. 
 The guillotine has many sins, but to do it 
 justice there is nothing evolutionary about it. 
 The favourite evolutionary argument finds its 
 best answer in the axe. The Evolutionist says, 
 " Where do you draw the line ^ " the Revolu- 
 tionist answers, " I draw it here : exactly 
 between your head and body." There must 
 at any given moment be an abstract right and 
 wrong if any blow is to be struck ; there must 
 be something eternal if there is to be anything 
 sudden. Therefore for all intelligible human 
 purposes, for altering things or for keeping 
 things as they are, for founding a system for 
 ever, as in China, or for altering it every month 
 as in the early French Revolution, it is equally 
 necessary that the vision should be a fixed 
 vision. This is our first requirement. 
 
 When I had written this down, I felt once 
 again the presence of something else in the dis- 
 cussion : as a man hears a church bell above 
 the sound of the street. Something seemed to 
 be saying, " My ideal at least is fixed ; for it 
 was fixed before the foundations of the world. 
 My vision of perfection assuredly cannot be 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 altered ; for it is called Eden. You may alter 
 the place to which you are going ; but you 
 cannot alter the place from which you have 
 come. To the orthodox there must always be 
 a case for revolution ; for in the hearts of men 
 God has been put under the feet of Satan. In 
 the upper world hell once rebelled against 
 heaven. But in this world heaven is rebelling 
 against heU. For the orthodox there can always 
 be a revolution ; for a revolution is a restora- 
 tion. At any instant you may strike a blow 
 for the perfection which no man has seen since 
 Adam. No unchanging custom, no changing 
 evolution can make the original good anything 
 but good. Man may have had concubines as 
 long as cows have had horns : still they are not 
 a part of him if they are sinful. Men may 
 have been under oppression ever since fish 
 were under water ; still they ought not to be, 
 if oppression is sinful. The chain may seem 
 as natural to the slave, or the paint to the 
 harlot, as does the plume to the bird or the 
 burrow to the fox ; still they are not, if they 
 are sinful. I lift my prehistoric legend to defy 
 all your history. Your vision is not merely a 
 fixture : it is a fact." I paused to note the 
 new coincidence of Christianity : but I passed 
 on. 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 I passed on to the next necessity of any ideal 
 of progress. Some people (as we have said) 
 seem to believe in an automatic and impersonal 
 progress in the nature of things. But it is 
 clear that no political activity can be encouraged 
 by saying that progress is natural and in- 
 evitable ; that is not a reason for being active, 
 but rather a reason for being lazy. If we are 
 bound to improve, we need not trouble to 
 improve. The pure doctrine of progress is the 
 best of all reasons for not being a progressive. 
 But it is to none of these obvious comments 
 that I wish primarily to call attention. 
 
 The only arresting point is this : that if we 
 suppose improvement to be natural, it must be 
 fairly simple. The world might conceivably be 
 working towards one consummation, but hardly 
 towards any particular arrangement of many 
 qualities. To take our original simile : Nature 
 by herself may be growing more blue ; that is, 
 a process so simple that it might be im- 
 personal. But Nature cannot be making a 
 careful picture made of many picked colours, 
 unless Nature is personal. If the end of the 
 world were mere darkness or mere light it 
 might come as slowly and inevitably as dusk or 
 dawn. But if the end of the world is to be a 
 piece of elaborate and artistic chiaroscuro, then 
 
The Eternal Revolution 
 
 there must be design in it, either human or 
 divine. The world, through mere time, might 
 grow black like an old picture, or white like an 
 old coat ; but if it is turned into a particular 
 piece of black and white art — then there is an 
 artist. 
 
 If the distinction be not evident, I give 
 an ordinary instance. We constantly hear a 
 particularly cosmic creed from the modern 
 humanitarians ; I use the word humanitarian 
 in the ordinary sense, as meaning one who 
 upholds the claims of all creatures against those 
 of humanity. They suggest that through the 
 ages we have been growing more and more 
 humane, that is to say, that one after another, 
 groups or sections of beings, slaves, children, 
 women, cows, or what not, have been gradually 
 admitted to mercy or to justice. They say 
 that we once thought it right to eat men (we 
 didn't) ; but I am not here concerned with their 
 history, which is highly unhistorical. As a 
 fact, anthropophagy is certainly a decadent 
 thing, not a primitive one. It is much more 
 likely that modern men will eat human flesh 
 out of affectation than that primitive man ever 
 ate it out of ignorance. I am here only 
 following the outlines of their argument, which 
 consists in maintaining that man has been 
 203 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 progressively more lenient, first to citizens, then 
 to slaves, then to animals, and then (presumably) 
 to plants. I think it wrong to sit on a man. 
 Soon, I shall think it wrong to sit on a horse. 
 Eventually (I suppose) 1 shall think it wrong 
 to sit on a chair. That is the drive of the 
 argument. And for this argument it can be 
 said that it is possible to talk of it in terms ot 
 evolution or inevitable progress. A perpetual 
 tendency to touch fewer and fewer things 
 might, one feels, be a mere brute unconscious 
 tendency, like that of a species to produce 
 fewer and fewer children. This drift may be 
 really evolutionary, because it is stupid. 
 
 Darwinism can be used to back up two mad 
 moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a 
 single sane one. The kinship and competition 
 of all living creatures can be used as a reason 
 for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental ; 
 but not for a healthy love of animals. On the 
 evolutionary basis you may be inhumane, or you 
 may be absurdly humane ; but you cannot be 
 human. That you and a tiger are one may be 
 a reason for being tender to a tiger. Or it 
 may be a reason for being as cruel as the tiger. 
 It is one way to train the tiger to imitate you, 
 it is a shorter way to imitate the tiger. But in 
 neither case does evolution tell you how to 
 204 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 treat a tiger reasonably, that is, to admire his 
 stripes while avoiding his claws. 
 
 If you want to treat a tiger reasonably, 
 you must go back to the garden of Eden. 
 For the obstinate reminder continued to 
 recur : only the supernatural has taken a sane 
 view of Nature. The essence of all pantheism, 
 evolutionism, and modern cosmic religion is 
 really in this proposition : that Nature is our 
 mother. Unfortunately, if you regard Nature 
 as a mother, you discover that she is a step- 
 mother. The main point of Christianity was 
 this : that Nature is not our mother : Nature 
 is our sister. We can be proud of her beauty, 
 since we have the same father ; but she has 
 no authority over us ; we have to admire, but 
 not to imitate. This gives to the typically 
 Christian pleasure in this earth a strange touch 
 of lightness that is almost frivolity. Nature 
 was a solemn mother to the worshippers of 
 Isis and Cybele. Nature was a solemn mother 
 to Wordsworth or to Emerson. But Nature 
 is not solemn to Francis of Assisi or to George 
 Herbert. To St. Francis, Nature is a sister, 
 and even a younger sister : a little, dancing 
 sister, to be laughed at as well as loved. 
 
 This, however, is hardly our main point at 
 present ; I have admitted it only in order to 
 
 205 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 show how constantly, and as it were acciden- 
 tally, the key would fit the smallest doors. 
 Our main point is here, that if there be a 
 mere trend of impersonal improvement in 
 Nature, it must presumably be a simple trend 
 towards some simple triumph. One can 
 imagine that some automatic tendency in 
 biology might work for giving us longer and 
 longer noses. But the question is, do we want 
 to have longer and longer noses } I fancy 
 not ; I believe that we most of us want to 
 say to our noses, " Thus far, and no farther ; 
 and here shall thy proud point be stayed " : 
 we require a nose of such length as may ensure 
 an interesting face. But we cannot imagine 
 a mere biological trend towards producing 
 interesting faces ; because an interesting face 
 is one particular arrangement of eyes, nose, 
 and mouth, in a most complex relation to each 
 other. Proportion cannot be a drift : it is 
 either an accident or a design. So with the 
 ideal of human morality and its relation to the 
 humanitarians and the anti-humanitarians. It 
 is conceivable that we are going more and more 
 to keep our hands off things : not to drive 
 horses ; not to pick flowers. We may eventually 
 be bound not to disturb a man's mind even by 
 argument ; not to disturb the sleep of birds 
 206 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 even by coughing. The ultimate apotheosis 
 would appear to be that of a man sitting quite 
 still, not daring to stir for fear of disturbing a 
 fly, nor to eat for fear of incommoding a 
 microbe. To so crude a consummation as that 
 we might perhaps unconsciously drift. But do 
 we want so crude a consummation ? Similarly, 
 we might unconsciously evolve along the 
 opposite or Nietzscheian line of development — 
 superman crushing superman in one tower of 
 tyrants until the universe is smashed up for 
 fiin. But do we want the universe smashed 
 up for fiin ? Is it not quite clear that what 
 we really hope for is one particular manage- 
 ment and proposition of these two things ; a 
 certain amount of restraint and respect, a 
 certain amount of energy and mastery. If our 
 life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy-tale, 
 we shall have to remember that all the beauty 
 of a fairy-tale lies in this : that the prince has 
 a wonder which just stops short of being fear. 
 If he is afraid of the giant, there is an end 
 of him ; but also if he is not astonished at 
 the giant, there is an end of the fairy-tale. 
 The whole point depends upon his being at 
 once humble enough to wonder, and haughty 
 enough to defy. So our attitude to the giant 
 of the world must not merely be increasing 
 
 207 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 delicacy or increasing contempt : it must be 
 one particular proportion of the two — which 
 is exactly right. We must have in us enough 
 reverence for all things outside us to make 
 us tread fearfully on the grass. We must also 
 have enough disdain for all things outside 
 us, to make us, on due occasion, spit at the 
 stars. Yet these two things (if we are to be 
 good or happy) must be combined, not in any 
 combination, but in one particular combination. 
 The perfect happiness of men on the earth 
 (if it ever comes) will not be a flat and solid 
 thing, like the satisfaction of animals. It will 
 be an exact and perilous balance ; like that of 
 a desperate romance. Man must have just 
 enough faith in himself to have adventures, 
 and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy 
 them. 
 
 This, then, is our second requirement for the 
 ideal of progress. First, it must be fixed ; 
 second, it must be composite. It must not 
 (if it is to satisfy our souls) be the mere victory 
 of some one thing swallowing up everything 
 else, love or pride or peace or adventure ; it 
 must be a definite picture composed of these 
 elements in their best proportion and relation. 
 I am not concerned at this moment to deny 
 that some such good culmination may be, by 
 208 
 
The Eternal Revolution 
 
 the constitution of things, reserved for the 
 human race. I only point out that if this com- 
 posite happiness is fixed for us it must be fixed 
 by some mind ; for only a mind can place the 
 exact proportions of a composite happiness. If 
 the beatification of the world is a mere work of 
 nature, then it must be as simple as the freezing 
 of the world, or the burning up of the world. 
 But if the beatification of the world is not a 
 work of nature but a work of art, then it 
 involves an artist. And here again my con- 
 templation was cloven by the ' ancient voice 
 which said, "I could have told you all this a 
 long time ago. If there is any certain progress 
 it can only be my kind of progress, the progress 
 towards a complete city of virtues and domina- 
 tions where righteousness and peace contrive to 
 kiss each other. An impersonal force might 
 be leading you to a wilderness of perfect flatness 
 or a peak of perfect height. But only a per- 
 sonal God can possibly be leading you (if, 
 indeed, you are being led) to a city with just 
 streets and architectural proportions, a city in 
 which each of you can contribute exactly the 
 right amount of your own colour to the many- 
 coloured coat of Joseph." 
 
 Twice again, therefore, Christianity had come 
 in with the exact answer that I required. I 
 209 o 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 had said, "The ideal must be fixed," and the 
 Church had answered, " Mine is literally fixed, 
 for it existed before anything else." I said 
 secondly, " It must be artistically combined, 
 like a picture " ; and the Church answered, 
 " Mine is quite literally a picture, for I know 
 who painted it." Then I went on to the third 
 thing, which, as it seemed to me, was needed 
 for an Utopia or goal of progress. And of all 
 the three it is infinitely the hardest to express. 
 Perhaps it might be put thus : that we need 
 watchfulness even in Utopia, lest we fall from 
 Utopia as we fell from Eden. 
 
 We have remarked that one reason offered 
 for being a progressive is that things naturally 
 tend to grow better. But the only real reason 
 for being a progressive is that things naturally 
 tend to grow worse. The corruption in things 
 is not only the best argument for being pro- 
 gressive ; it is also the only argument against 
 being conservative. The conservative theory 
 would really be quite sweeping and unanswer- 
 able if it were not for this one fact. But all 
 conservatism is based upon the idea that if you 
 leave things alone you leave them as they are. 
 But you do not. If you leave a thing alone 
 you leave it to a torrent of change. If you 
 leave a white post alone it will soon be a black 
 zio 
 
The Eternal Bevolutiow 
 
 post. If you particularly want it to be white 
 you must be always painting it again ; that is, 
 you must be always having a revolution. 
 Briefly, if you want the old white post you 
 must have a new white post. But this which 
 is true even of inanimate things is in a quite 
 special and terrible sense true of all human 
 things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really 
 required of the citizen because of the horrible 
 rapidity with which human institutions grow 
 old. It is the custom in passing romance and 
 journalism to talk of men suffering under old 
 tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost 
 always suffered under new tyrannies ; under 
 tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly 
 twenty years before. Thus England went mad 
 with joy over the patriotic monarchy of Eliza- 
 beth ; and then (almost immediately afterwards) 
 went mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny 
 of Charles the First. So, again, in France the 
 monarchy became intolerable, not just after it 
 had been tolerated, but just after it had been 
 adored. The son of Louis the well-beloved 
 was Louis the guillotined. So in the same 
 way in England in the nineteenth century 
 the Radical manufacturer was entirely trusted 
 as a mere tribune of the people, until sud- 
 denly we heard the cry of the Socialist that 
 
 211 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 he was a tyrant eating the people like bread. 
 So again, we have almost up to the last 
 instant trusted the newspapers as organs of 
 public opinion. Just recently some of us have 
 seen (not slowly, but with a start) that they are 
 obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by 
 the nature of the case, the hobbies of a few 
 rich men. We have not any need to rebel 
 against antiquity ; we have to rebel against 
 novelty. It is the new rulers, the capitalist or 
 the editor, who really hold up the modern 
 world. There is no fear that a modern king 
 will attempt to override the constitution ; it is 
 more likely that he will ignore the constitution 
 and work behind its back ; he will take no 
 advantage of his kingly power ; it is more likely 
 that he will take advantage of his kingly power- 
 lessness, of the fact that he is free from 
 criticism and publicity. For the king is the 
 most private person of our time. It will not 
 be necessary for any one to fight again against 
 the proposal of a censorship of the press. ' We 
 do not need a censorship of the press. We 
 have a censorship by the press. 
 
 This startling swiftness with which popular 
 systems turn oppressive is the third fact for 
 which we shall ask our perfect theory of 
 progress to allow. It must always be on the 
 
 213 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 look out for every privilege being abused, for 
 every working right becoming a wrong. In 
 this matter I am entirely on the side of the 
 revolutionists. They are really right to be 
 always suspecting human institutions ; they are 
 right not to put their trust in princes nor 
 in any child of man. The chieftain chosen to 
 be the friend of the people becomes the enemy 
 of the people ; the newspaper started to tell the 
 truth now exists to prevent the truth being 
 told. Here, I say, I felt that I was really at 
 last on the side of the revolutionary. And then 
 I caught my breath again : for I remembered that 
 I was once again on the side of the orthodox. 
 
 Christianity spoke again and said, " I have 
 always maintained that men were naturally 
 backsliders ; that human virtue tended of its 
 own nature to rust or to rot ; I have always 
 said that human beings as such go wrong, 
 especially happy human beings, especially proud 
 and prosperous human beings. This eternal 
 revolution, this suspicion sustained through 
 centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the 
 doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher 
 you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of 
 original sin. You may call it the cosmic 
 advance as much as you like ; I call it what it is 
 —the Fall. 
 
 213 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 I have spoken of orthodoxy coming in like a 
 sword ; here I confess it came in like a battle- 
 axe. For really (when I came to think of it) 
 Christianity is the only thing left that has any 
 real right to question the power of the well- 
 nurtured or the well-bred. I have listened 
 often enough to Socialists, or even to democrats, 
 saying that the physical conditions of the poor 
 must of necessity make them mentally and 
 morally degraded, I have listened to scientific 
 men (and there are still scientific men not op- 
 posed to democracy) saying that if we give the 
 poor healthier conditions vice and wrong will 
 disappear. I have listened to them with a 
 horrible attention, with a hideous fascination. 
 For it was like watching a man energetically 
 sawing from the tree the branch he is sitting 
 on. If these happy democrats could prove their 
 case, they would strike democracy dead. If the 
 poor are thus utterly demoralized, it may or may 
 not be practical to raise them. But it is 
 certainly quite practical to disfranchise them. 
 If the man with a bad bedroom cannot 
 give a good vote, then the first and swiftest 
 deduction is that he shall give no vote. The 
 governing class may not unreasonably say, 
 " It may take us some time to reform his 
 bedroom. But if he is the brute you say, it 
 214 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 will take him very litde time to ruin our 
 country. Therefore we will take your hint 
 and not give him the chance." It fills me with 
 horrible amusement to observe the way in 
 which the earnest Socialist industriously lays 
 the foundation of all aristocracy, expatiating 
 blandly upon the evident unfitness of the poor 
 to rule. It is like listening to somebody at an 
 evening party apologising for entering without 
 evening dress, and explaining that he had 
 recently been intoxicated, had a personal habit 
 of taking off his clothes in the street, and had, 
 moreover, only just changed from prison 
 uniform. At any moment, one . feels, the host 
 might say that really, if it was as bad as that, 
 he need not come in at all. So it is when the 
 ordinary Socialist, with a beaming face, proves 
 that the poor, after their smashing experiences, 
 cannot be really trustworthy. At any moment 
 the rich may say, " Very well, then, we won't 
 trust them," and bang the door in his face. 
 On the basis of Mr. Blatchford's view of 
 heredity and environment, the case for the 
 aristocracy is quite overwhelming. If clean 
 homes and clean air make clean souls, why not 
 give the power (for the present at any rate) to 
 those who undoubtedly have the clean air .? If 
 better conditions will make the poor more fit 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 to govern themselves, why should not better 
 conditions already make the rich more fit to 
 govern them ? On the ordinary environ- 
 ment argument the matter is fairly manifest. 
 The comfortable class must be merely our 
 vanguard in Utopia, 
 
 Is there any answer to the proposition that 
 those who have had the best opportunities will 
 probably be our best guides ? Is there any 
 answer to the argument that those who have 
 breathed clean air had better decide for those 
 who have breathed foul ? As far as I know, 
 there is only one answer, and that answer is 
 Christianity. Only the Christian Church can 
 offer any rational objection to a complete 
 confidence in the rich. For she has maintained 
 from the beginning that the danger was not in 
 man's environment, but in man. Further, she 
 has maintained that if we come to talk of a 
 dangerous environment, the most dangerous 
 environment of all is the commodious environ- 
 ment. I know that the most modern manu- 
 facture has been really occupied in trying to 
 produce an abnormally large needle. I know 
 that the most recent biologists have been chiefly 
 anxious to discover a very small camel. But if 
 we diminish the camel to his smallest, or open 
 the eye of the needle to its largest — if, in short, 
 216 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 we assume the words of Christ to have meant 
 the very least that they could mean, His words 
 must at the very least mean this — that rich men 
 are not very likely to be morally trustworthy. 
 Christianity even when watered down is hot 
 enough to boil all modern society to rags. The 
 mere minimum of the Church would be a deadly 
 ultimatum to the world. For the whole modern 
 world is absolutely based on the assumption, not 
 that the rich are necessary (which is tenable), 
 but that the rich are trustworthy, which (for a 
 Christian) is not tenable. You will hear ever- 
 lastingly, in all discussions about newspapers, 
 companies, aristocracies, or party politics, this 
 argument that the rich man cannot be bribed. 
 The fact is, of course, that the rich man is 
 bribed ; he has been bribed already. That is 
 why he is a rich man. The whole case for 
 Christianity is that a man who is dependent 
 upon the luxuries of this life is a corrupt man, 
 spiritually corrupt, politically corrupt, financially 
 corrupt. There is one thing that Christ and all 
 the Christian saints have said with a sort of 
 savage monotony. They have said simply that 
 to be rich is to be in peculiar danger of moral 
 wreck. It is not demonstrably un-Christian to 
 kiU the rich as violators of definable justice. It 
 is not demonstrably un-Christian to crown the 
 
 217 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 rich as convenient rulers of society. It is not 
 certainly un-Christian to rebel against the rich 
 or to submit to the rich. But it is quite 
 certainly un-Christian to trust the rich, to regard 
 the rich as more morally safe than the poor. A 
 Christian may consistently say, " I respect that 
 man's rank, although he takes bribes." But a 
 Christian cannot say, as all modern men are 
 saying at lunch and breakfast, " a man of that 
 rank would not take bribes." For it is a part 
 of Christian dogma that any man in any rank 
 may take bribes. It is a part of Christian 
 dogma ; it also happens by a curious coinci- 
 dence that it is a part of obvious human history. 
 When people say that a man " in that position " 
 would be incorruptible, there is no need to 
 bring Christianity into the discussion. Was 
 Lord Bacon a bootblack ? Was the Duke of 
 Marlborough a crossing sweeper .? In the best 
 Utopia, I must be prepared for the moral fall 
 of any man in any position at any moment ; 
 especially for my fall from my position at this 
 moment. 
 
 Much vague and sentimental journalism has 
 been poured out to the effect that Christianity 
 Is akin to democracy, and most of it Is scarcely 
 strong or clear enough to refute the fact that 
 the two things have often quarrelled. The real 
 218 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 ground upon which Christianity and democracy 
 are one is very much deeper. The one spe- 
 cially and peculiarly un-Christian idea is the idea 
 of Carlyle — the idea that the man should rule 
 who feels that he can rule. Whatever else is 
 Christian, this is heathen. If our faith comments 
 on government at all, its comment must be 
 this — that the man should rule who does not 
 think that he can rule. Carlyle's hero may 
 say, " I will be king " ; but the Christian saint 
 must say, " Nolo episcopari." If the great 
 paradox of Christianity means anything, it 
 means this — that we must take the crown in 
 our hands, and go hunting in dry places and 
 dark corners of the earth until we find the one 
 man who feels himself unfit to wear it. Carlyle 
 was quite wrong ; we have not got to crown 
 the exceptional man who knows he can rule. 
 Rather we must crown the much more excep- 
 tional man who knows he can't. 
 
 Now, this is one of the two or three vital 
 defences of working democracy. The mere 
 machinery of Voting is not democracy, though 
 at present it is not easy to effect any simpler 
 democratic method. But even the machinery 
 of voting is profoundly Christian in this prac- 
 tical sense — that it is an attempt to get at the 
 opinion of those who would be too modest to 
 219 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 offer it. It is a mystical adventure ; it is spe- 
 cially trusting those who do not trust themselves. 
 That enigma is strictly peculiar to Christendom. 
 There is nothing really humble about the abne- 
 gation of the Buddhist ; the mild Hindoo is 
 mild, but he is not meek. But there is some- 
 thing pyschologically Christian about the idea 
 of seeking for the opinion of the obscure rather 
 than taking the obvious course of accepting the 
 opinion of the prominent. To say that voting 
 is particularly Christian may seem somewhat 
 curious. To say that canvassing is Christian 
 may seem quite crazy. But canvassing is very 
 Christian in Its primary Idea. It Is encouraging 
 the humble ; it is saying to the modest man, 
 " Friend, go up higher." Or if there is some 
 slight defect In canvassing, that is in Its perfect 
 and rounded piety, It is only because it may 
 possibly neglect to encourage the modesty of 
 the canvasser. 
 
 Aristocracy Is not an Institution : aristocracy 
 is a sin ; generally a very venial one. It is 
 merely the drift or slide of men into a sort of 
 natural pomposity and praise of the powerful, 
 which Is the most easy and obvious affair in the 
 world. 
 
 It is one of the hundred answers to the 
 fugitive perversion of modern " force " that 
 
 220 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 the promptest and boldest agencies are also the 
 most fragile or full of sensibility. The swiftest 
 things are the softest things. A bird is active, 
 because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, 
 because a stone is hard. The stone must by 
 its own nature go downwards, because hardness 
 is weakness. The bird can of its nature go 
 upwards, because fragility is force. In perfect 
 force there is a kind of frivolity, an airiness 
 that can maintain , itself in the air. Modern 
 investigators of miraculous history have solemnly 
 admitted that a characteristic of the great saints 
 is their power of " levitation." They might 
 go further ; a characteristic of the great saints 
 is their power of levity. Angels can fly because 
 they can take themselves lightly. This has 
 been always the instinct of Christendom, and 
 especially the instinct of Christian art. Re- 
 member how Fra Angelico represented all his 
 angels, not only as birds, but almost as butter- 
 flies. Remember how the most earnest mediaeval 
 art was full of light and fluttering draperies, of 
 quick and capering feet. It was the one thing 
 that the modern Pre-raphaelites could not 
 imitate in the real Pre-raphaelites. Burne- 
 Jones could never recover the deep levity of 
 the Middle Ages. In the old Christian pictures 
 the sky over every figure is like a blue or gold 
 
 221 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 parachute. Every figure seems ready to fly up 
 and float about in the heavens. The tattered 
 cloak of the beggar will bear him up like the 
 rayed plumes of the angels. But the kings 
 in their heavy gold and the proud in their 
 robes of purple will all of their nature sink 
 downwards, for pride cannot rise to levity or 
 levitation. Pride is the downward drag of all 
 things into an easy solemnity. One " settles 
 down " into a sort of selfish seriousness ; but 
 one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A 
 man " falls " into a brown study ; he reaches 
 up at a blue sky. Seriousness is not a virtue. 
 It would be a heresy, but a much more sensible 
 heresy, to say that seriousness is a vice. It is 
 really a natural trend or lapse into taking one's 
 self gravely, because it is the easiest thing to 
 do. It is much easier to write a good Times 
 leading article than a good joke in Punch. For 
 solemnity flows out of men naturally ; but 
 laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy : 
 hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of 
 gravity. 
 
 Now, it is the peculiar honour of Europe 
 since it has been Christian that while it has 
 had aristocracy it has always at the back of 
 its heart treated aristocracy as a weakness — 
 generally as a weakness that must be allowed 
 
 222 
 
The Eternal Bevolution 
 
 for. If any one wishes to appreciate this 
 point, let him go outside Christianity into 
 some other philosophical atmosphere. Let 
 him, for instance, compare the classes of 
 Europe with the castes of India. There 
 aristocracy is far more awful, because it is 
 far more intellectual. It is seriously felt 
 that the scale of classes is a scale of spiritual 
 values ; that the baker is better than the 
 butcher in an invisible and sacred sense. 
 But no Christianity, not even the most 
 ignorant or perverse, ever suggested that a 
 baronet was better than a butcher in that 
 sacred sense. No Christianity, however 
 ignorant or extravagant, ever suggested that 
 a duke would not be damned. In pagan 
 society there may have been (I do not know) 
 some such serious division between the free 
 man and the slave. But in Christian society 
 we have always thought the gentleman a sort 
 of joke, though I admit that in some great 
 crusades and councils he earned the right to 
 be called a practical joke. But we in Europe 
 never really and at the root of our souls took 
 aristocracy seriously. It is only an occasional 
 non-European alien (such as Dr. Oscar Levy, 
 the only intelligent Nietzscheite) who can even 
 manage for a moment to take aristocracy 
 223 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 seriously. It may be a mere patriotic bias, 
 though I do not think so, but it seems to 
 me that the English aristocracy is not only the 
 type, but is the crown and flower of all actual 
 aristocracies ; it has all the oligarchical virtues 
 as well as aU the defects. It is casual, it is 
 kind, it is courageous in obvious matters ; but 
 it has one great merit that overlaps even these. 
 The great and very obvious merit of the English 
 aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it 
 seriously. 
 
 In short, I had spelled out slowly, as usual, 
 the need for an equal law in Utopia ; and, as 
 usual, I found that Christianity had been there 
 before me. The whole history of my Utopia 
 has the same amusing sadness, I was always 
 rushing out of my architectural study with 
 plans for a new turret only to find it sitting up 
 there in the sunlight, shining, and a thousand 
 years old. For me, in the ancient and partly in 
 the modern sense, God answered the prayer, 
 " Prevent us, O Lord, in all our doings." 
 Without vanity, I really think there was a 
 moment when I could have invented the 
 marriage vow (as an institution) out of my own 
 head ; but I discovered, with a sigh, that it had 
 been invented already. But, since it would be 
 too long a business to show how, fact by fact 
 224 
 
The Eternal Revolution 
 
 and inch by inch, my own conception of Utopia 
 was only answered in the New Jerusalem, I 
 wiU take this one case of the matter of marriage 
 as indicating the converging drift, I may say 
 the converging crash of all the rest. 
 
 When the ordinary opponents of Socialism 
 talk about impossibilities and alterations in 
 human nature they always miss an important 
 distinction. In modern ideal conceptions of 
 society there are some desires that are possibly 
 not attainable : but there are some desires that 
 are not desirable. That all men should live in 
 equally beautiful houses is a dream that may or 
 may not be attained. But that all men should 
 live in the same beautiful house is not a dream 
 at aU ; it is a nightmare. That a man should 
 love all old women is an ideal that may not be 
 attainable. But that a man should regard all 
 old women exactly as he regards his mother is 
 not only an unattainable ideal, but an ideal 
 which ought not to be attained. I do not 
 know if the reader agrees with me in these 
 examples ; but I will add the example which 
 has always aiFected me most. I could never 
 conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not 
 leave to me the liberty for which I chiefly care, 
 the liberty to bind myself Complete anarchy 
 would not merely make it impossible to have 
 
 22S P 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 any discipline or fidelity ; it would also make 
 it impossible to have any fun. To take an 
 obvious instance, it would not be worth while 
 to bet if a bet were not binding. The dissolu- 
 tion of all contracts would not only ruin 
 morality but spoil sport. Now betting and 
 such sports are only the stunted and twisted 
 shapes of the original instinct of man for 
 adventure and romance, of which much has 
 been said in these pages. And the perils, 
 rewards, punishments, and fulfilments of an 
 adventure must be real, or the adventure is 
 only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If 1 
 bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry 
 in betting. If I challenge I must be made to 
 fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If 
 I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I 
 am unfaithful, or there is no fun in vowing. 
 You covdd not even make a fairy tale from the 
 experiences of a man who, when he was 
 swallowed by a whale, might find himself at 
 the top of the Eiffel Tower, or when he was 
 turned into a frog might begin to behave like a 
 flamingo. For the purpose even of the wildest 
 romance, results must be real ; results must be 
 irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great 
 example of a real and irrevocable result ; and 
 that is why it is the chief subject and centre of 
 226 
 
The Eternal Revolution 
 
 all our romantic writing. And this is my last 
 instance of the things that I should ask, and ask 
 imperatively, of any social paradise ; I should 
 ask to be kept to my bargain, to have my oaths 
 and engagements taken seriously ; I should ask 
 Utopia to avenge my honour on myself. 
 
 All my modern Utopian friends look at each 
 other rather doubtfully, for their ultimate hope 
 is the dissolution of all special ties. But again 
 I seem to hear, like a kind of echo, an answer 
 from beyond the world. " You will have real 
 obligations, and therefore real adventures when 
 you get to my Utopia. But the hardest 
 obligation and the steepest adventure is to get 
 there." 
 
 227 
 
Chapter VIII — The Bomance of Ortho- 
 doxy 
 
 IT is customary to complain of the bustle 
 and strenuousness of our epoch. But 
 in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a 
 profound laziness and fatigue ; and the 
 fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the 
 apparent bustle. Take one quite external case ; 
 the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motor- 
 cars ; but this is not due to human activity but 
 to human repose. There would be less bustle 
 if there were more activity, if people were 
 simply walking about. Our world would be 
 more silent if it were more strenuous. And 
 this which is true of the apparent physical 
 bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the 
 intellect. Most of the machinery of modern 
 language is labour-saving machinery ; and it 
 saves mental labour very much more than it 
 ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific 
 wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and 
 smoother yet the path of the comfortable. 
 Long words go rattling by us like long railway 
 trains. We know they are carrying thousands 
 who are too tired or too indolent to walk and 
 think for themselves. It is a good exercise to 
 
 2?8 
 
The Romance of Orthodoxy 
 
 try for once in a way to express any opinion 
 one holds in words of one syllable. If you 
 say " The social utility of the indeterminate 
 sentence is recognised by all criminologists as a 
 part of our sociological evolution towards a more 
 humane and scientific view of punishment," you 
 can go on talking like that for hours with 
 hardly a movement of the grey matter inside 
 your skull. But if you begin " I wish Jones to 
 go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall 
 come out," you will discover, with a thrill of 
 horror, that you are obliged to think. The 
 long words are not the hard words, it is the 
 short words that are hard. There is much 
 more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" 
 than in the word " degeneration." 
 
 But these long comfortable words that save 
 modern people the toil of reasoning have one 
 particular aspect in which they are especially 
 ruinous and confusing. This difficulty occurs 
 when the same long word is used in different 
 connections to mean quite different things. 
 Thus, to take a well-known instance, the word 
 " idealist " has one meaning as a piece of 
 philosophy and quite another as a piece of 
 moral rhetoric. In the same way the scientific 
 materialists have had just reason to complain 
 of people mixing up "materialist" as a term of 
 229 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 cosmology with " materialist " as a moral taunt. 
 So, to take a cheaper instance, the man who 
 hates " progressives " in London always calls 
 himself a " progressive " in South Africa. 
 
 A confusion quite as unmeaning as this has 
 arisen in connection with the word " liberal " 
 as applied to religion and as applied to 
 politics and society. It is often suggested 
 that all Liberals ought to be freethinkers, 
 because they ought to love everything that 
 is free. You might just -as well say that 
 all idealists ought to be High Churchmen, 
 because they ought to love everything that is 
 high. You might as well say that Low Church- 
 men ought to like Low Mass, or that Broad 
 Churchmen ought to like broad jokes. The 
 thing is a mere accident of words. In actual 
 modern Europe a free-thinker does not mean 
 a man who thinks for himself. It means a 
 man who, having thought for himself, has come 
 to one particular class of conclusions, the 
 material origin of phenomena, the impossibility 
 of miracles, the improbability of personal im- 
 mortality and so on. And none of these ideas 
 are particularly liberal. Nay, indeed almost all 
 these ideas are definitely illiberal, as it is the 
 purpose of this chapter to show. 
 
 In the few following pages I propose to point 
 23° 
 
The Romance of Orthodoxy 
 
 out as rapidly as possible that on every single 
 one of the matters most strongly insisted on 
 by liberalisers of theology their effect upon 
 social practice would be definitely illiberal. 
 Almost every contemporary proposal to bring 
 freedom into the church is simply a proposal 
 to bring tyranny into the world. For freeing 
 the church now does not even mean freeing 
 it in all directions. It means freeing that 
 peculiar set of dogmas loosely called scientific, 
 dogmas of monism, of pantheism, or of 
 Arianism, or of necessity. And every one of 
 these (and we will take them one by one) can 
 be shown to be the natural ally of oppression. 
 In fact, it is a remarkable circumstance (indeed 
 not so very remarkable when one comes to 
 think of it) that most things are the allies of 
 oppression. There is only one thing that can 
 never go past a certain point in its alliance with 
 oppression — and that is orthodoxy. I may, it 
 is true, twist orthodoxy so as partly to justify a 
 tyrant. But I can easily make up a German 
 philosophy to justify him entirely. 
 
 Now let us take in order the innovations 
 that are the notes of the new theology or the 
 modernist church. We concluded the last 
 chapter with the discovery of one of them. 
 The very doctrine which is called the most 
 231 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 old-fashioned was found to be the only safeguard 
 of the new democracies of the earth. The 
 doctrine seemingly most unpopular was found 
 to be the only strength of the people. In short, 
 we found that the only logical negation of 
 oligarchy was in the affirmation of original 
 sin. So it is, I maintain, in all the other 
 cases. 
 
 I take the most obvious instance first, the 
 case of miracles. For some extraordinary 
 reason, there is a fixed notion that it is more 
 liberal to disbelieve in miracles than to believe 
 in them. "Why, I cannot imagine, nor can 
 anybody tell me. For some inconceivable 
 cause a " broad " or " liberal " clergyman 
 always means a man who wishes at least to 
 diminish the number of miracles ; it never 
 means a man who wishes to increase that 
 number. It always means a man who is free 
 to disbelieve that Christ came out of His 
 grave ; it never means a man who is free 
 to believe that his own aunt came out of her 
 grave. It is common to find trouble in a 
 parish because the parish priest cannot admit 
 that St. Peter walked on water ; yet how rarely 
 do we find trouble in a parish because the 
 clergyman says that his father walked on the 
 Serpentine ? And this is not because (as 
 232 
 
The Bomance of .Orthodoxy 
 
 the swift secularist debater would immediately 
 retort) miracles cannot be believed in our 
 experience. It is not because " miracles do 
 not happen," as in the dogma which Matthew 
 Arnold recited with simple faith. More super- 
 natural things are alleged to have happened in 
 our time than would have been possible eighty 
 years ago. Men of science believe in such 
 marvels much more than they did : the most 
 perplexing, and even horrible, prodigies of mind 
 and spirit are always being unveiled in modern 
 psychology. Things that the old science at 
 least would frankly have rejected as miracles 
 are hourly being asserted by the new science. 
 The only thing which is still old-fashioned 
 enough to reject miracles is the New Theology. 
 But in truth this notion that it is " free " to 
 deny miracles has nothing to do with the 
 evidence for or against them. It is a lifeless 
 verbal prejudice of which the original life and 
 beginning was not in the freedom of thought, 
 but simply in the dogma of materialism. The 
 man of the nineteenth century did not dis- 
 believe in the Resurrection because his liberal 
 Christianity allowed him to doubt it. He dis- 
 believed in it because his very strict materialism 
 did not allow him to believe it. Tennyson, 
 a very typical nineteenth-century man, uttered 
 333 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 one of the instinctive truisms of his contem- 
 poraries when he said that there was faith 
 in their honest doubt. There was indeed. 
 Those words have a profound and even a 
 horrible truth. In their doubt of miracles 
 there was a faith in a fixed and godless fate ; 
 a deep and sincere faith in the incurable routine 
 of the cosmos. The doubts of the agnostic 
 were only the dogmas of the monist. 
 
 Of the fact and evidence of the supernatural 
 I will speak afterwards. Here we are only 
 concerned with this clear point ; that in so 
 far as the liberal idea of freedom can be said 
 to be on either side in the discussion about 
 miracles, it is obviously on the side of miracles. 
 Reform or (in the only tolerable sense) progress 
 means simply the gradual control of matter by 
 mind. A miracle simply means the swift con- 
 trol of matter by mind. If you wish to feed 
 the people, you may think that feeding them 
 miraculously in the wilderness is impossible — 
 but you cannot think it illiberal. If you really 
 want poor children to go to the seaside, you 
 cannot think it illiberal that they should 
 go there on flying dragons ; you can only 
 think it unlikely. A holiday, like Liberalism, 
 only means the liberty of man. A miracle 
 only means the liberty of God. You may 
 234 
 
The Bomance of Orthodoxy 
 
 conscientiously deny either of them, but you 
 cannot call your denial a triumph of the liberal 
 idea. The Catholic Church believed that man 
 and God both had a sort of spiritual freedom. 
 Calvinism took away the freedom from man, 
 but left it to God. Scientific materialism 
 binds the Creator Himself; it chains up God 
 as the Apocalypse chained the devil. It leaves 
 nothing free in the universe. And those who 
 assist this process are called the "liberal 
 theologians." 
 
 This, as I say, is the lightest and most 
 evident case. The assumption that there is 
 something in the doubt of miracles akin to 
 liberality or reform is literally the opposite of 
 the truth. If a man cannot believe in miracles 
 there is an end of the matter ; he is not particu- 
 larly liberal, but he is perfectly honourable and 
 logical, which are much better things. But if 
 he can believe in miracles, he is certainly the 
 more liberal for doing so ; because they mean 
 first, the freedom of the soul, and secondly, 
 its control over the tyranny of circumstance. 
 Sometimes this truth is ignored in a singularly 
 naive way, even by the ablest men. For 
 instance, Mr. Bernard Shaw speaks with a 
 hearty old-fashioned contempt for the idea of 
 miracles, as if they were a sort of breach of 
 235 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 faith on the part of nature : he seems strangely 
 unconscious that miracles are only the final 
 flowers of his own favourite tree, the doctrine 
 of the omnipotence of will. Just in the same 
 way he calls the desire for immortality a paltry 
 selfishness, forgetting that he has just called the 
 desire for life a healthy and heroic selfishness. 
 How can it be noble to wish to make one's 
 life infinite and yet mean to wish to make it 
 immortal ? No, if it is desirable that man 
 should triumph over the cruelty of nature or 
 custom, then miracles are certainly desirable ; 
 we will discuss afterwards whether they are 
 possible. 
 
 But I must pass on to the larger cases of this 
 curious error ; the notion that the " liberalising " 
 of religion in some way helps the liberation ot 
 the world. The second example of it can be 
 found in the question of pantheism — or rather 
 of a certain modern attitude which is often called 
 immanentism, and which often is Buddhism. 
 But this is so much more difficult a matter that 
 I must approach wit ith rather more preparation. 
 
 The things said most confidently by advanced 
 persons to crowded audiences are generally those 
 quite opposite to the fact ; it is actually our 
 truisms that are untrue. Here is a case. There 
 is a phrase of facile liberality uttered again and 
 236 
 
The Bomance of Orthodoxy 
 
 again at ethical societies and parliaments of 
 
 religion : " the religions of the earth difFer in 
 
 rites and forms, but they are the same in what 
 
 they teach." It is false ; it is the opposite of 
 
 the fact. The religions of the earth do not 
 
 greatly differ in rites and forms ; they do greatly 
 
 differ in what they teach. It is as if a man 
 
 were to say, "Do not be misled by the fact 
 
 that the Church Times and the Freethinker 
 
 look utterly different, that one is painted on 
 
 vellum and the other carved on marble, that 
 
 one is triangular and the other hectagonal ; 
 
 read them and you will see that they say the 
 
 same thing." The truth is, of course, that 
 
 they are alike in everything except in the fact 
 
 that they don't say the same thing. An atheist 
 
 stockbroker in Surbiton looks exactly like a 
 
 Swedenborgian stockbroker in Wimbledon. 
 
 You may walk round and round them and 
 
 subject them to the most personal and offensive 
 
 study without seeing anything Swedenborgian 
 
 in the hat or anything particularly godless in 
 
 the umbrella. It is exactly in their souls that 
 
 they are divided. So the truth is that the 
 
 difficulty of all the creeds of the earth is not as 
 
 alleged in this cheap maxim : that they agree in 
 
 meaning, but differ in machinery. It is exactly 
 
 the opposite. They agree in machinery ; 
 
 237 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 almost every great religion on earth works with 
 the same external methods, with priests, scrip- 
 tures, altars, sworn brotherhoods, special feasts. 
 They agree in the mode of teaching ; what they 
 differ about is the thing to be taught. Pagan 
 optimists and Eastern pessimists would both have 
 temples, just as Liberals and Tories would both 
 have newspapers. Creeds that exist to destroy 
 each other both have scriptures, just as armies 
 that exist to destroy each other both have guns. 
 
 The great example of this alleged identity of 
 all human religions is the alleged spiritual 
 identity of Buddhism and Christianity. Those 
 who adopt this theory generally avoid the 
 ethics of most other creeds, except, indeed, 
 Confucianism, which they like because it is 
 not a creed. But they are cautious in their 
 praises of Mahommedanism, generally con- 
 fining themselves to imposing its morality 
 only upon the refreshment of the lower classes. 
 They seldom suggest the Mahommedan view 
 of marriage (for which there is a great deal to 
 be said), and towards Thugs and fetish wor- 
 shippers their attitude may even be called cold. 
 But in the case of the great religion of Gautama 
 they feel sincerely a similarity. 
 
 Students of popular science, like Mr. Blatch- 
 ford, are always insisting that Christianity and 
 238 
 
The Bomance of Orthodoxy 
 
 Buddhism are very much alike, especially Budd- 
 hism. This is generally believed, and I believed 
 it myself until I read a book giving the reasons 
 for it. The reasons were of two kinds : resem- 
 blances that meant nothing because they were 
 common to all humanity, and resemblances 
 which were not resemblances at all. The 
 author solemnly explained that the two creeds 
 were alike in things in which all creeds are 
 alike, or else he" described them as alike in 
 some point in which they are quite obviously 
 diflPerent. Thus, as a case of the first class, he 
 said that both Christ and Buddha were called 
 by the divine voice coming out of the sky, 
 as if you would expect the divine voice to 
 come out of the coal-cellar. Or, again, it was 
 gravely urged that these two Eastern teachers, 
 by a singular coincidence, both had to do with 
 the washing of feet. You might as weU say 
 that it was a remarkable coincidence that they 
 both had feet to wash. And the other class of 
 similarities were those which simply were not 
 similar. Thus this reconciler of the two 
 religions draws earnest attention to the fact 
 that at certain religious feasts the robe of the 
 Lama is rent in pieces out of respect, and 
 the remnants highly valued. But this is the 
 reverse of a resemblance, for the garments of 
 239 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 Christ were not rent in pieces out of respect, 
 but out of derision ; and the remnants were 
 not highly valued except for what they would 
 fetch in the rag shops. It is rather like allud- 
 ing to the obvious connection between the two 
 ceremonies of the sword : when it taps a man's 
 shoulder, and when it cuts oiF his head. It is 
 not at all similar for the man. These scraps of 
 puerile pedantry would indeed matter little if 
 it were not also true that the alleged philoso- 
 phical resemblances are also of these two kinds, 
 either proving too much or not proving any- 
 thing. That Buddhism approves of mercy or 
 of self-restraint is not to say that it is specially 
 like Christianity ; it is only to say that it is not 
 utterly unlike all human existence. Buddhists 
 disapprove in theory of cruelty or excess 
 because all sane human beings disapprove in 
 theory of cruelty or excess. But to say that 
 Buddhism and Christianity give the same 
 philosophy of these things is simply false. All 
 humanity does agree that we are in a net of 
 sin. Most of humanity agrees that there is 
 some way out. But as to what is the way out, 
 I do not think that there are two institutions 
 in the universe which contradict each other so 
 flatly as Buddhism and Christianity. 
 
 Even when I thought, with most other 
 240 
 
The Bomance of Orthodoxy 
 
 well-informed, though unscholarly, people, that 
 Buddhism and Christianity were alike, there 
 was one thing about them that always perplexed 
 me ; I mean the startling difference in their 
 type of religious art. I do not mean in its 
 technical style of representation, but in the 
 things that it was manifestly meant to represent. 
 No two ideals could be more opposite than a 
 Christian saint in a Gothic cathedral and a 
 Buddhist saint in a Chinese temple. The 
 opposition exists at every point ; but perhaps 
 the shortest statement of it is that the Buddhist 
 saint always has his eyes shut, while the Chris- 
 tian saint always has them very wide open. 
 The Buddhist saint has a sleek and harmonious 
 body, but his eyes are heavy and sealed with 
 sleep. The mediaeval saint's body is wasted to 
 its crazy bones, but his eyes are frightfully 
 alive. There cannot be any real community of 
 spirit between forces that produced symbols so 
 different as that. Granted that both images 
 are extravagances, are perversions of the pure 
 creed, it must be a real divergence which could 
 produce such opposite extravagances. The 
 Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness 
 inwards. The Christian is staring with a frantic 
 intentness outwards. If we follow that clue 
 steadily we shall find some interesting things. 
 241 Q 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 A short time ago Mrs. Besant, in an interest- 
 ing essay, announced that there was only one 
 religion in the world, that all faiths were only 
 versions or perversions of it, and that she was 
 quite prepared to say what it was. According 
 to Mrs. Besant this universal Church is simply 
 the universal self. It is the doctrine that we 
 are really aU one person ; that there are no real 
 walls of individuality between man and man. 
 If I may put it so, she does not tell us to love 
 our neighbours ; she tells us to be our neigh- 
 bours. That is Mrs. Besant's thoughtful and 
 suggestive description of the religion in which 
 all men must find themselves in agreement. 
 And I never heard of any suggestion in my life 
 with which I more violently disagree. I want 
 to love my neighbour not because he is I, 
 but precisely because he is not I. I want to 
 adore the world, not as one likes a looking- 
 glass, because it is one's self, but as one loves a 
 woman, because she is entirely different. If 
 souls are separate love is possible. If souls 
 are united love is obviously impossible. A 
 man may be said loosely to love himself, but 
 he can hardly fall in love with himself, or, if 
 he does, it must be a monotonous courtship. 
 If the world is full of real selves, they can be 
 really unselfish selves. But upon Mrs. Besant's 
 242 
 
The Eomance of Orthodox]/ 
 
 principle the whole cosmos is only one enor- 
 mously selfish person. 
 
 It is just here that Buddhism is on the side 
 of modern pantheism and immanence. And 
 it is just here that Christianity is on the side 
 of humanity and liberty and love. Love desires 
 personality ; therefore love desires division. It 
 is the instinct of Christianity to be glad that 
 God has broken the universe into little pieces, 
 because they are living pieces. It is her instinct 
 to say *' little children love one another " rather 
 than to tell one large person to love himself. 
 This is the intellectual abyss between Buddhism 
 and Christianity ; that for the Buddhist or 
 Theosophist personality is the fall of man, 
 for the Christian it is the purpose of God, the 
 whole point of his cosmic idea. The world- 
 soul of the Theosophists asks man to love it 
 only in order that man may throw himself into 
 it. But the divine centre of Christianity 
 actually threw man out of it in order that he 
 might love it. The oriental deity is like a 
 giant who should have lost his leg or hand and 
 be always seeking to find it ; but the Christian 
 power is like some giant who in a strange 
 generosity should cut oflF his right hand, so that 
 it might of its own accord shake hands with 
 him. We come back to the same tireless note 
 
 243 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 touching the nature of Christianity ; all modern 
 philosophies are chains which connect and fetter ; 
 Christianity is a sword which separates and sets 
 free. No other philosophy makes God actually 
 rejoice in the separation of the universe into 
 living souls. But according to orthodox Chris- 
 tianity this separation between God and man 
 is sacred, because this is eternal. That a man 
 may love God it is necessary that there should 
 be not only a God to be loved, but a man to 
 love him. All those vague theosophical minds 
 for whom the universe is an immense melting- 
 pot are exactly the minds which shrink in- 
 stinctively from that earthquake saying of our 
 Gospels, which declare that the Son of God 
 came not with peace but with a sundering 
 sword. The saying rings entirely true even 
 considered as what it obviously is ; the state- 
 ment that any man who preaches real love is 
 bound to beget hate. It is as true of democratic 
 fraternity as of divine love ; sham love ends in 
 compromise and common philosophy ; but real 
 love has always ended in bloodshed. Yet there 
 Is another and yet more awful truth behind the 
 obvious meaning of this utterance of our Lord. 
 According to Himself the Son was a sword 
 separating brother and brother that they should 
 for an aeon hate each other. But the Father 
 244 
 
The Bomance of Orthodoxy 
 
 also was a sword, which in the black beginning 
 separated brother and brother, so that they 
 should love each other at last. 
 
 This is the meaning of that almost insane 
 happiness in the eyes of the mediaeval saint in 
 the picture. This is the meaning of the sealed 
 eyes of the superb Buddhist image. The 
 Christian saint is happy because he has verily 
 been cut off from the world ; he is separate 
 from things and is staring at them in astonish- 
 ment. But why should the Buddhist saint be 
 astonished at things ? since there is really only 
 one thing, and that being impersonal can hardly 
 be astonished at itself. There have been many 
 pantheist poems suggesting wonder, but no 
 really successful ones. The pantheist cannot 
 wonder, for he cannot praise God or praise 
 anything as really distinct from himself. Our 
 immediate business here however is with the 
 effect of this Christian admiration (which strikes 
 outwards, towards a deity distinct from the 
 worshipper) upon the general need for ethical 
 activity and social reform. And surely its 
 effect is sufficiently obvious. There is no real 
 possibility of getting out of pantheism any 
 special impulse to moral action. For pantheism 
 implies in its nature that one thing is as good 
 as another ; whereas action implies in its nature 
 245 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 that one thing is greatly preferable to another. 
 Swinburne in the high summer of his scepticism 
 tried in vain to wrestle with this difficulty. In 
 " Songs before Sunrise," written under the in- 
 spiration of Garibaldi and the revolt of Italy, 
 he proclaimed the newer religion and the purer 
 God which should wither up all the priests of 
 the world. 
 
 " What doest thou now 
 Looking GodWard to cry 
 I am I, thou art thou, 
 I am low, thou art high, 
 
 I am thou that thou seekest to find him, find thou 
 but thyself, thou art I." 
 
 Of which the immediate and evident deduc- 
 tion is that tyrants are as much the sons of 
 God as Garibaldis ; and that King Bomba of 
 Naples having, with the utmost success, " found 
 himself" is identical with the ultimate good in 
 all things. The truth is that the western 
 energy that dethrones tyrants has been directly 
 due to the western theology that says " I am I, 
 thou art thou." The same spiritual separation 
 which looked up and saw a good king in the 
 universe looked up and saw a bad king in 
 Naples. The worshippers of Bomba's god 
 dethroned Bomba. The worshippers of Swin- 
 burne's god have covered Asia for centuries 
 246 
 
The Romance of Orthodoxy 
 
 and have never dethroned a tyrant. The Indian 
 saint may reasonably shut his eyes because he 
 is looking at that which is I and Thou and We 
 and They and It. It is a rational occupation : 
 but it is not true in theory and not true in fact 
 that it helps the Indian to keep an eye on Lord 
 Curzon. That external vigilance which has 
 always been the mark of Christianity (the 
 command that we should watch and pray) has 
 expressed itself both in typical western ortho- 
 doxy and in typical western politics : but both 
 depend on the idea of a divinity transcendent, 
 different from ourselves, a deity that disappears. 
 Certainly the most sagacious creeds may suggest 
 that we should pursue God into deeper and 
 deeper rings of the labyrinth of our own ego. 
 But only we of Christendom have said that 
 we should hunt God like an eagle upon the 
 mountains : and we have killed all monsters in 
 the chase. 
 
 Here again, therefore, we find that in so far 
 as we value democracy and the self-renewing 
 energies of the west, we are much more likely 
 to find them in the old theology than the new. 
 If we want reform, we must adhere to ortho- 
 doxy : especially in this matter (so much dis- 
 puted in the counsels of Mr. R. J. Campbell), 
 the matter of insisting on the immanent or the 
 247 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 transcendent deity. By Insisting specially on 
 the immanence of God we get introspection, 
 self-isolation, quietism, social indifference — 
 Tibet. By insisting specially on the transcen- 
 dence of God we get wonder, curiosity, moral 
 and political adventure, righteous indignation 
 — Christendom. Insisting that God is inside 
 man, man is always Inside himself By in- 
 sisting that God transcends man, man has 
 transcended himself. 
 
 If we take any other doctrine that has been 
 called old-fashioned we shall find the case the 
 same. It Is the same, for Instance, In the deep 
 matter of the Trinity. Unitarians (a sect 
 never to be mentioned without a special respect 
 for their distinguished Intellectual dignity and 
 high Intellectual honour) are often reformers 
 by the accident that throws so many small 
 sects into such an attitude. But there is 
 nothing in the least liberal or akin to reform 
 in the substitution of pure monotheism for the 
 Trinity. The complex God of the Athanasian 
 Creed may be an enigma for the Intellect ; but 
 He Is far less likely to gather the mystery and 
 cruelty of a Sultan than the lonely god of 
 Omar or Mahomet. The god who is a mere 
 awful unity is not only a king but an Eastern 
 king. The heart of humanity, especially of 
 248 
 
The Bomanee of Orthodoxy 
 
 European humanity, is certainly much more 
 satisfied by the strange hints and symbols that 
 gather round the Trinitarian idea, the image of 
 a council at which mercy pleads as well as 
 justice, the conception of a sort of liberty and 
 variety existing even in the inmost chamber of 
 the world. For Western religion has always felt 
 keenly the idea " it is not well for man to be 
 alone." The social instinct asserted itself every- 
 where as when the Eastern idea of hermits was 
 practically expelled by the Western idea of 
 monks. So even asceticism became brotherly ; 
 and the Trappists were sociable even when 
 they were silent. If this love of a living com- 
 plexity be our test, it is certainly healthier to 
 have the Trinitarian religion than the Unitarian. 
 For to us Trinitarians (if I may say it with 
 reverence) — to us God Himself is a society. 
 It is indeed a fathomless mystery of theology, 
 and even if I were theologian enough to deal 
 with it directly, it would not be relevant to do 
 so here. Suffice it to say here that this triple 
 enigma is as comforting as wine and open as an 
 English fireside ; that this thing that bewilders 
 the intellect utterly quiets the heart : but out 
 of the desert, from the dry places and the 
 dreadful suns, come the cruel children of the 
 lonely God ; the real Unitarians who with 
 249 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 scimitar in hand have laid waste the world. 
 For it is not well for God to be alone. 
 
 Again, the same is true of that difficult 
 matter of the danger of the soul, which has 
 unsettled so manyjust minds. To hope for all 
 souls is imperative ; and it is quite tenable that 
 their salvation is inevitable. It is tenable, but 
 it is not specially favourable to activity or 
 progress. Our fighting and creative society 
 ought rather to insist on the danger of every- 
 body, on the fact that every man is hanging by 
 a thread or clinging to a precipice. To say 
 that all will be well anyhow is a comprehensible 
 remark : but it cannot be called the blast of 
 a trumpet. Europe ought rather to emphasise 
 possible perdition ; and Europe always has 
 emphasised it. Here its highest religion is at 
 one with all its cheapest romances. To the 
 Buddhist or the eastern fatalist existence is a 
 science or a plan, which must end up in a 
 certain way. But to a Christian existence is a 
 story, which may end up in any way. In a 
 thrilling novel (that purely Christian product) 
 the hero is not eaten by cannibals ; but it is 
 essential to the existence of the thrill that he 
 might be eaten by cannibals. The hero must 
 (so to speak) be an eatable hero. So Christian 
 morals have always said to the man, not that he 
 250 
 
The Bomance of Orthodoxy 
 
 would lose his soul, but that he must take care 
 that he didn't. In Christian morals, in short, 
 it is wicked to call a man " damned " : but it 
 is strictly religious and philosophic to call him 
 damnable. 
 
 All Christianity concentrates on the man at 
 the cross-roads. The vast and shallow philoso- 
 phies, the huge syntheses of humbug, all talk 
 about ages and evolution and ultimate develop- 
 ments. The true philosophy is concerned with 
 the instant. Will a man take this road or 
 that ? that is the only thing to think about, if 
 you enjoy thinking. The aeons are easy enough 
 to think about, any one can think about them. 
 The instant is really awful : and it is because 
 our religion has intensely felt the instant, that 
 it has in literature dealt much with battle and 
 in theology dealt much with hell. It is full of 
 danger, like a boy's book : it is at an immortal 
 crisis. There is a great deal of real similarity 
 between popular fiction and the religion of the 
 western people. If you say that popular fiction 
 is vulgar and tawdry, you only say what the 
 dreary and well-informed say also about the 
 images in the Catholic churches. Life (accord- 
 ing to the faith) is very like a serial story in a 
 magazine : life ends with the promise (or 
 menace) " to be continued in our next." Also, 
 
 251 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 with a noble vulgarity, life imitates the serial 
 and leaves off at the exciting moment. For 
 death is distinctly an exciting moment. 
 
 But the point is that a story is exciting 
 because it has in it so strong an element of will, 
 of what theology calls free-will. You cannot 
 finish a sum how you like. But you can 
 finish a story how you like. When somebody 
 discovered the Differential Calculus there was 
 only one Differential Calculus he could discover. 
 But when Shakespeare killed Romeo he might 
 have married him to Juliet's old nurse if he 
 had felt inclined. And Christendom has 
 excelled in the narrative romance exactly 
 because it has insisted on the theological free- 
 will. It is a large matter and too much to one 
 side of the road to be discussed adequately 
 here ; but this is the real objection to that 
 torrent of modern talk about treating crime as 
 disease, about making a prison merely a 
 hygienic environment like a hospital, of healing 
 sin by slow scientific methods. The fallacy of 
 the whole thing is that evil is a matter of active 
 choice, whereas disease is not. If you say that 
 you are going to cure a profligate as you cure an 
 asthmatic, my cheap and obvious answer is, 
 " Produce the people who want to be asthmatics 
 as many people want to be profligates." A 
 252 
 
The Bomance of Orthodoxy 
 
 man may lie still and be cured of a malady. 
 But he must not lie still if he wants to be cured 
 of a sin ; on the contrary, he must get up and 
 jump about violently. The whole point indeed 
 is perfecdy expressed in the very word which 
 we use for a man in hospital ; " patient " is in 
 the passive mood ; " sinner " is in the active. 
 If a man is to be saved from influenza, he may 
 be a patient. But if he is to be saved from 
 forging, he must be not a patient but an 
 impatient. He must be personally impatient 
 with forgery. All moral reform must start in 
 the active not the passive will. 
 
 Here again we reach the same substantial 
 conclusion. In so far as we desire the definite 
 reconstructions and the dangerous revolutions 
 which have distinguished European civilisation, 
 we shall not discourage the thought of possible 
 ruin ; we shall rather encourage it. If we 
 want, like the Eastern saints, merely to con- 
 template how right things are, of course we 
 shall only say that they must go right. But if 
 we particularly want to make them go right, we 
 must insist that they may go wrong. 
 
 Lastly, this truth is yet again true in the 
 
 case of the common modern attempts to 
 
 diminish or to explain away the divinity of 
 
 Christ. The thing may be true or not ; that 
 
 253 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 I shall deal with before I end. But if the 
 divinity is true it is certainly terribly revolu- 
 tionary. That a good man may have his back 
 to the wall is no more than we knew already ; 
 but that God could have his back to the wall is 
 a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity 
 is the only religion on earth that has felt that 
 omnipotence made God incomplete. Chris- 
 tianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly 
 God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. 
 Alone of aU creeds, Christianity has added 
 courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the 
 only courage worth calling courage must 
 necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking 
 point — and does not break. In this indeed I 
 approach a matter more dark and awful than it 
 is easy to discuss ; and I apologise in advance 
 if any of my phrases faU wrong or seem 
 irreverent touching a matter which the greatest 
 saints and thinkers have justly feared to 
 approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion 
 there is a distinct emotional suggestion that 
 the author of all things (in some unthinkable 
 way) went not only through agony, but 
 through doubt. It is written, "Thou shalt 
 not tempt the Lord thy God." No ; but the 
 Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it 
 seems as if this was what happened in 
 254 
 
The Bomance of Orthodoxy 
 
 Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man : 
 and in a garden God tempted God. He passed 
 in some superhuman manner through our 
 human horror of pessimism. When the world 
 shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, 
 it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry 
 from the cross : the cry which confessed that 
 God was forsaken of God. And now let the 
 revolutionists choose a creed from all the 
 creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, 
 carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable 
 recurrence and of unalterable power. They 
 wiU not find another god who has himself been 
 in revolt. Nay, (the matter grows too difficult 
 for human speech) but let the atheists them- 
 selves choose a god. They will find only one 
 divinity who ever uttered their isolation ; only, 
 one religion in which God seemed for an 
 instant to be an atheist. 
 
 These can be called the essentials of the old 
 orthodoxy, of which the chief merit is that it is 
 the natural fountain of revolution and reform ; 
 and of which the chief defect is that it is 
 obviously only an abstract assertion. Its main 
 advantage is that it is the most adventurous 
 and manly of all theologies. Its chief disad- 
 vantage is simply that it is a theology. It can 
 always be urged against it that it is in its nature 
 
 255 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 arbitrary and in the air. But it is not so high 
 in the air but that great archers spend their 
 whole lives in shooting arrows at it — yes, and 
 their last arrows ; there are men who will ruin 
 themselves and ruin their civilisation if they 
 may ruin also this old fantastic tale. This is 
 the last and most astounding fact about this 
 faith ; that its enemies will use any weapon 
 against it, the swords that cut their own fingers, 
 and the firebrands that burn their own homes. 
 Men who begin to fight the Church for the 
 sake of freedom and humanity end by flinging 
 away freedom and humanity if only they may 
 fight the Church. This is no exaggeration ; 
 . I could fill a book with the instances of it. 
 Mr. Blatchford set out, as an ordinary Bible- 
 smasher, to prove that Adam was guiltless of sin 
 against God ; in manoeuvring so as to maintain 
 this he admitted, as a mere side issue, that all 
 the tyrants, from Nero to King Leopold, were 
 guiltless of any sin against humanity, I know 
 a man who has such a passion for proving that 
 he will have no personal existence after death 
 that he falls back on the position that he has no 
 personal existence now. He invokes Bhuddism 
 and says that all souls fade into each other ; 
 in order to prove that he cannot go to heaven 
 he proves that he cannot go to Hartlepool. 
 256 
 
The Romance of Orthodoxy 
 
 I have known people who protested against 
 religious education with arguments against any 
 education, saying that the child's mind must 
 grow freely or that the old must not teach the 
 young. I have known people who showed 
 that there could be no divine judgment by 
 showing that there can be no human judg- 
 ment, even for practical purposes. They 
 burned their own corn to set fire to the 
 church ; they smashed their own tools to 
 smash it ; any stick was good enough to beat 
 it with, though it were the last stick of their own 
 dismembered furniture. We do not admire, 
 we hardly excuse, the fanatic who wrecks this 
 world for love of the other. But what are we 
 to say of the fanatic who wrecks this world out 
 of hatred of the other ? He sacrifices the very 
 existence of humanity to the non-existence of 
 God. He offers his victims not to the altar, 
 but merely to assert the idleness of the altar 
 and the emptiness of the throne. He is ready 
 to ruin even that primary ethic by which all 
 things live, for his strange and eternal vengeance 
 upon some one who never lived at all. 
 
 And yet the thing hangs in the heavens 
 unhurt. Its opponents only succeed in de- 
 stroying aU that they themselves justly hold 
 dear. They do not destroy orthodoxy ; they 
 357 R 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 only destroy political courage and common 
 sense. They do not prove that Adam was not 
 responsible to God ; how could they prove it ? 
 They only prove (from their premises) that 
 the .Czar is not responsible to Russia. They 
 do not prove that Adam should not have been 
 punished by God ; they only prove that the 
 nearest sweater should not be punished by men. 
 With their oriental doubts about personality 
 they do not make certain that we shall have no 
 personal life hereafter ; they only make certain 
 that we shall not have a very jolly or complete 
 one here. With their paralysing hints of all 
 conclusions coming out wrong they do not tear 
 the book of the Recording Angel ; they only 
 make it a litde harder to keep the books of 
 Marshall and Snelgrove. Not only is the faith 
 the mother of all worldly energies, but its foes 
 are the fathers of all worldly confusion. The 
 secularists have not wrecked divine things ; 
 but the secularists have wrecked secular things, 
 if that is any comfort to them. The Titans 
 did not scale heaven ; but they laid waste the 
 world. 
 
 258 
 
Chapter IX — Authority and the 
 Adventurer 
 
 THE last chapter has been concerned 
 with the contention that orthodoxy 
 is not only (as is often urged) the 
 only safe guardian of morality or 
 order, but is also the only logical guardian of 
 liberty, innovation and advance. If we wish to 
 pull down the prosperous oppresssor we cannot 
 do it with the new doctrine of human per- 
 fectibility ; we can do it with the old doctrine of 
 Original Sin. If we want to uproot inherent 
 cruelties or lift up lost populations we cannot 
 do it with the scientific theory that matter 
 precedes mind ; we can do it with the super- 
 natural theory that mind precedes matter. If 
 we wish specially to awaken people to social 
 vigilance and tireless pursuit of practise, we 
 cannot help it much by insisting on the 
 Immanent] God and the Inner Light : for these 
 are at best reasons for contentment ; we can help 
 it much by insisting on the transcendant God and 
 the flying and escaping gleam ; for that means 
 divine discontent. If we wish particularly to 
 assert the idea of a generous balance against 
 that of a dreadful autocracy we shall instinctively 
 259 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 be Trinitarian rather than Unitarian. If we 
 desire European civilisation to be a raid and a 
 rescue, we shall insist rather that souls are in 
 real peril than that their peril is ultimately un- 
 real. And if we wish to exalt the outcast and 
 the crucified, we shall rather wish to think .that 
 a veritable God was crucified, rather than a 
 mere sage or hero. Above all, if we wish to 
 protect the poor we shall be in favour of fixed 
 rules and clear dogmas. The rules of a club 
 are occasionally in favour of the poor member. 
 The drift of a club is always in favour of the 
 rich one. 
 
 And now we come to the crucial question 
 which truly concludes the whole matter. A 
 reasonable agnostic, if he has happened to 
 agree with me so far, may justly turn round and 
 say, " You have found a practical philosophy in 
 the doctrine of the Fall ; very well. You have 
 found a side of democracy now dangerously 
 neglected wisely asserted in Original Sin ; all 
 right. You have found a truth in the doctrine 
 of hell ; I congratulate you. You are convinced 
 that worshippers of a personal God look outwards 
 and are progressive ; I congratulate them. But 
 even supposing that those doctrines do include 
 those truths, why cannot you take the truths 
 and leave the doctrines ? Granted that all 
 260 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 modern society is trusting the rich too much 
 because it does not allow for human weakness ; 
 granted that orthodox ages have had a great 
 advantage because (believing in the Fall) they 
 did allow for human weakness, why cannot you 
 siniply 'allow for human weakness without be- 
 lieving in the Fall ? If you have discovered 
 that the idea of damnation represents a healthy 
 idea of danger, why can you not simply take 
 the idea of danger and leave the idea of 
 damnation ? If you see clearly the kernel 
 of common-sense in the nut of Christian 
 orthodoxy, why cannot you simply take the 
 kernel and leave the nut ? Why cannot you 
 .(to use that cant phrase of the newspapers 
 which I, as a highly scholarly agnostic, am a 
 little ashamed of using) why cannot you 
 simply take what is good in Christianity, 
 what you can define as valuable, what you 
 can comprehend, and leave all the rest, all 
 the absolute dogmas that are in their nature 
 incomprehensible ? " This is the real question ; 
 this is the last question ; and it is a pleasure to 
 try to answer it. 
 
 The first answer is simply to say that 
 
 I am a rationalist. I like to have some 
 
 intellectual justification for my intuitions. 
 
 If I am treating man as a fallen being it is an 
 
 261 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 intellectual convenience to me to believe that 
 he fell ; and I find, for some odd psychological 
 reason, that I can deal better with a man's 
 exercise of freewill if I believe that he has got 
 it. But I am in this matter yet more definitely 
 a rationalist. I do not propose to turn this book 
 into one of ordinary Christian apologetics ; I 
 should be glad to meet at any other time the 
 enemies of Christianity in that more obvious 
 arena. Here I am only giving an account of 
 my own growth in spiritual certainty. But I 
 may pause to remark that the more I saw of 
 the merely abstract arguments against the 
 Christian cosmology the less I thought of them. 
 I mean that having found the moral atmosphere 
 of the Incarnation to be common sense, I then 
 looked at the established intellectual arguments 
 against the Incarnation and found them to be 
 common nonsense. In case the argument 
 should be thought to suiFer from the absence of 
 the ordinary apologetic I will here very briefly 
 summarise my own arguments and conclusions 
 on the purely objective or scientific truth of 
 the matter. 
 
 If I am asked, as a purely intellectual ques- 
 tion, why I believe in Christianity, I can only 
 answer, "For the same reason that an intel- 
 ligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity." I 
 262 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence. 
 
 But the evidence in my case, as in that of the 
 
 intelligent agnostic, is not really in this or that 
 
 alleged demonstration ; it is in an enormous 
 
 accumulation of small but unanimous facts. 
 
 The secularist is not to be blamed because his 
 
 objections to Christianity are miscellaneous and 
 
 even scrappy ; it is precisely such scrappy 
 
 evidence that does convince the mind. I mean 
 
 that a man may well be less convinced of a 
 
 philosophy from four books, than from one 
 
 book, one battle, one landscape, and one old 
 
 friend. The very fact that the things are of 
 
 different kinds increases the importance of the 
 
 fact that they all point to one conclusion. 
 
 Now, the non-Christianity of the average 
 
 educated man to-day is almost always, to do 
 
 him justice, made up of these loose but living 
 
 experiences. I can only say that my evidences 
 
 for Christianity are of the same vivid but varied 
 
 kind as his evidences against it. For when I 
 
 look at these various anti-Christian truths, 
 
 I simply discover that none of them are true. 
 
 I discover that the true tide and force of all the 
 
 facts flows the other way. Let us take cases. 
 
 Many a sensible modern man must have 
 
 abandoned Christianity under the pressure of 
 
 three such converging convictions as these : 
 
 263 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 first, that men, with their shape, structure, and 
 sexuality, are, after all, very much like beasts, a 
 mere variety of the animal kingdom ; second, 
 that primeval religion arose in ignorance and 
 fear ; third, that priests have blighted societies 
 with bitterness and gloom. Those three anti- 
 Christian arguments are very different ; but 
 they are all quite logical and legitimate ; and 
 they all converge. The only objection to them 
 (I discover) is that they are all untrue. If you 
 leave off looking at books about beasts and 
 men, if you begin to look at beasts and men then 
 (if you have any humour or imagination, any 
 sense of the frantic or the farcical) you will 
 observe that the startling thing is not how like 
 man is to the brutes, but how unlike he is. It 
 is the monstrous scale of his divergence that 
 requires an explanation. That man and brute 
 are like is, in a sense, a truism ; but that being 
 so like they should then be so insanely unlike, 
 that is the shock and the enigma. That an ape 
 has hands is far less interesting to the 
 philosopher than the fact that having hands 
 he does next to nothing with them ; does not 
 play knuckle-bones or the violin ; does not 
 carve marble or carve mutton. People talk of 
 barbaric architecture and debased art. But 
 elephants do not build colossal temples of ivory 
 264 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 even in a roccoco style ; camels do not paint 
 even bad pictures, though equipped with the 
 material of many camel's-hair brushes. Certain 
 modern dreamers say that ants and bees have a 
 society superior to ours. They have, indeed, a 
 civilisation ; but that very truth only reminds 
 us that it is an inferior civilisation. Who ever 
 found an ant-hill decorated with the statues of 
 celebrated ants ? Who has seen a bee-hive 
 carved with the images of gorgeous queens of 
 old ? No ; the chasm between man and other 
 creatures may have a natural explanation, but it 
 is a chasm. We talk of wild animals ; but 
 man is the only wild animal. It is man that 
 has broken out. All other animals are tame 
 animals ; following the rugged respectability of 
 the tribe or type. All other animals are 
 domestic animals ; man alone is ever undomestic, 
 either as a profligate or a monk. So that this 
 first superficial reason for materialism is, if 
 anything, a reason for its opposite ; it is exactly 
 where biology leaves off that all religion begins. 
 It would be the same if I examined the 
 second of the three chance rationalist arguments ; 
 the argument that all that we call divine began 
 in some darkness and terror. When I did 
 attempt to examine the foundations of this 
 modern idea I simply found that there were 
 265 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 none. Science knows nothing whatever about 
 pre-historic man ; for the excellent reason that 
 he is pre-historic. A few professors choose to 
 conjecture that such things as human sacrifice 
 were once innocent and general and that they 
 gradually dwindled ; but there is no direct 
 evidence of it, and the small amount of indirect 
 evidence is very much the other way. In the 
 earliest legends we have, such as the tales of 
 Isaac and of Iphigenia, human sacrifice is not 
 introduced as something old, but rather as 
 something new ; as a strange and frightful 
 exception darkly demanded by the gods. 
 History says nothing ; and legends all say that 
 the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There 
 is no tradition of progress ; but the whole 
 human race has a tradition of the Fall. 
 Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dissemina- 
 tion of this idea is used against its authenticity. 
 Learned men literally say that this pre-historic 
 calamity cannot be true because every race of 
 mankind remembers it. I cannot keep pace 
 with these paradoxes. 
 
 And if we took the third chance instance, it 
 would be the same ; the view that priests 
 darken and embitter the world. I look at the 
 world and simply discover that they don't. 
 Those countries in Europe which are still 
 266 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 influenced by priests, are exacdy the countries 
 where there is still singing and dancing and 
 coloured dresses and art in the open-air. 
 Catholic doctrine and discipline may be 
 walls ; but they are the walls of a play- 
 ground. Christianity is the only frame which 
 has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. We 
 might fancy some children playing on the 
 flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. 
 So long as there was a wall round the cliff's 
 edge they could fling themselves into every 
 frantic game and make the place the noisiest of 
 nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, 
 leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They 
 did not fall over ; but when their friends 
 returned to them they were all huddled in 
 terror in the centre of the island ; and their 
 song had ceased. 
 
 Thus these three facts of experience, such 
 facts as go to make an agnostic, are, in this 
 view, turned totally round. I am left saying, 
 " Give me an explanation, first, of the towering 
 eccentricity of man among the brutes ; second, 
 of the vast human tradition of some ancient 
 happiness ; third, of the partial perpetuation of 
 such pagan joy in the countries of the Catholic 
 Church." One explanation, at any rate, covers 
 all three : the theory that twice was the natural 
 267 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 order interrupted by some explosion or reve- 
 lation such as people now call " psychic." Once 
 Heaven came upon the earth with a power or 
 seal called the image of God, whereby man took 
 command of Nature ; and once again (when 
 in empire after empire men had been found 
 wanting) Heaven came to save mankind in the 
 awful shape of a man. This would explain 
 why the mass of men always look backwards ; 
 and why the only corner where they in any 
 sense look forwards is the little continent where 
 Christ has His Church. I know it will be said 
 that Japan has become progressive. But how 
 can this be an answer when even in saying 
 " Japan has become progressive," we reaUy 
 only mean, " Japan has become European " ? 
 But I wish here not so much to insist on my 
 own explanation as to insist on my original 
 remark. I agree with the ordinary unbelieving 
 man in the street in being guided by three or four 
 odd facts all pointing to something ; only when 
 I came to look at the facts I always found they 
 pointed to something else. 
 
 I have given an imaginary triad of such 
 ordinary anti-Christian arguments ; if that be 
 too narrow a basis I will give on the spur of 
 the moment another. These are the kind of 
 thoughts which in combination create the 
 268 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 impression that Christianity is something weak 
 and diseased. First, for instance, that Jesus 
 was a gentle creature, sheepish and unworldly, 
 a mere ineffectual appeal to the world ; second, 
 that Christianity arose and flourished in the 
 dark ages of ignorance, and that to these the 
 Church would drag us back ; third, that the 
 people still strongly religious or (if you will) 
 superstitious — such people as the Irish — are 
 weak, unpractical, and behind the times. I 
 only mention these ideas to affirm the same 
 thing : that when I looked into them inde- 
 pendently I found, not that the conclusions 
 were unphilosophical, but simply that the facts 
 were not facts. Instead of looking at books 
 and pictures about the New Testament I looked 
 at the New Testament. There I found an 
 account, not in the least of a person with his 
 hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped 
 in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with 
 lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, 
 flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing 
 with the wild secrecy of the wind from moun- 
 tain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy ; 
 a being who often acted like an angry god — 
 and always like a god. Christ had even a 
 literary style of his own, not to be found, I 
 think, elsewhere ; it consists of an almost 
 
 269 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 furious use of the a fortiori. His " how much 
 more " is piled one upon another like castle 
 upon castle in the clouds. The diction used 
 about Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet 
 and submissive. But the diction used by Christ 
 is quite curiously gigantesque ; it is full of 
 camels leaping through needles and mountains 
 hurled into the sea. Morally it is equally 
 terrific ; he called himself a sword of slaughter, 
 and told men to buy swords if they sold their 
 coats for them. That he used other even 
 wilder words on the side of non-resistance 
 greatly increases the mystery ; but it also, if 
 anything, rather increases the violence. We 
 cannot even explain it by calling such a being 
 insane ; for insanity is usually along one con- 
 sistent channel. The maniac is generally a 
 monomaniac. Here we must remember the 
 difficult definition of Christianity already given ; 
 Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby 
 two opposite passions may blaze beside each 
 other. The one explanation of the Gospel 
 language that does explain it, is that it is the 
 survey of one who from some supernatural 
 height beholds some more startling synthesis. 
 
 I take in order the next instance offered : 
 the idea that Christianity belongs to the dark 
 ages. Here I did not satisfy myself with 
 270 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 reading modern generalisations ; I read a litde 
 history. And in history I found that Christi- 
 anity, so far from belonging to the dark ages, 
 was the one path across the dark ages that was 
 not dark. It was a shining bridge connecting 
 two shining civilisations. If any one says that 
 the faith arose in ignorance and savagery the 
 answer is simple : it didn't. It arose in the 
 Mediterranean civilisation in the full summer 
 of the Roman Empire. The world was swarm- 
 ing with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as 
 the sun, when Constantine nailed the cross to 
 the mast. It is perfectly true that afterwards 
 the ship sank ; but it is far more extraordinary 
 that the ship came up again : repainted and 
 glittering, with the cross still at the top. This 
 is the amazing thing the religion did : it turned 
 a sunken ship into a submarine. The ark lived 
 under the load of waters ; after being buried 
 under the debris of dynasties and clans, we 
 arose and remembered Rome. If our faith had 
 been a mere fad of the fading empire, fad would 
 have followed fad in the twilight, and if the 
 civilisation ever re-emerged (and many such 
 have never re-emerged) it would have been 
 under some new barbaric flag. But the Christian 
 Church was the last life of the old society and 
 was also the first life of the new. She took the 
 271 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 people who were forgetting how to make an 
 arch and she taught them to invent the Gothic 
 arch. In a word, the most absurd thing that 
 could be said of the Church is the thing we 
 have all heard said of it. How can we say that 
 the Church wishes to bring us back into the 
 Dark Ages .? The Church was the only thing 
 that ever brought us out of them. 
 
 I added in this second trinity of objections 
 an idle instance taken from those who feel such 
 people as the Irish to be weakened or made 
 stagnant by superstition. I only added it 
 because this is a peculiar case of a statement of 
 fact that turns out to be a statement of false- 
 hood. It is constantly said of the Irish that 
 they are impractical. But if we refrain for a 
 moment from looking at what is said about 
 them and look at what is done about them, we 
 shall see that the Irish are not only practical, 
 but quite painfully successful. The poverty of 
 their country, the minority of their memlDers 
 are simply the conditions under which they 
 were asked to work ; but no other group in 
 the British Empire has done so much with such 
 conditions. The Nationalists were the only 
 minority that ever succeeded in twisting the 
 whole British Parliament sharply out of its path. 
 The Irish peasants are the only poor men in 
 272 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 these islands who have forced their masters to 
 disgorge. These people, whom we call priest- 
 ridden, are the only Britons who will not be 
 squire-ridden. And when I came to look at the 
 actual Irish character, the case was the same. 
 Irishmen are best at the specially hard profes- 
 sions — the trades of iron, the lawyer, and the 
 soldier. In all these cases, therefore, I came 
 back to the same conclusion : the sceptic was 
 quite right to go by the facts, only he had not 
 looked at the facts. The sceptic is too credu- 
 lous ; he believes in newspapers or even in 
 encyclopaedias. Again the three questions left 
 me with three very antagonistic questions. 
 The average sceptic wanted to know how I 
 explained the namby-pamby note in the Gospel, 
 the connection of the creed with mediaeval 
 darkness and the political impracticability of the 
 Celtic Christians. But I wanted to ask, and to 
 ask with an earnestness amounting to urgency, 
 "What is this incomparable energy which 
 appears first in one walking the earth like a 
 living judgment and this energy which can die 
 with a dying civilisation and yet force it to a 
 resurrection from the dead ; this energy which 
 last of all can inflame a bankrupt peasantry 
 with so fixed a faith in justice that they get 
 what they ask, while others go empty away ; 
 273 s 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 so that the most helpless island of the Empire 
 can actually help itself ? " 
 
 There is an answer : it is an answer to say 
 that the energy is truly from outside the world ; 
 that it is psychic, or at least one of the results 
 of a real psychical disturbance. The highest 
 gratitude and respect are due to the great 
 human civilisations such as the old Egyptian 
 or the existing Chinese. Nevertheless it is no 
 injustice for them to say that only modern 
 Europe has exhibited incessantly a power of self- 
 renewal recurring often at the shortest intervals 
 and descending to the smallest facts of building 
 or costume, AH other societies die finally and 
 with dignity. We die daily. We are always being 
 born again with almost indecent obstetrics. 
 It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is 
 in historic Christendom a sort of unnatural life : 
 it could be explained as a supernatural life. It 
 could be explained as an awful galvanic life 
 working in what would have been a corpse. 
 For our civilisation ought to have died, by all 
 parallels, by all sociological probability, in the 
 Ragnorak of the end of Rome. That is 
 the weird inspiration of our estate : you and I 
 have no business to be here at all. We are all 
 revenants ; all living Christians are dead pagans 
 walking about. Just as Europe was about 
 274 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 to be gathered in silence ' to Assyria and Baby- 
 lon, something entered into its body. And 
 Europe has had a strange life — it is not too 
 much to say that it has had the jumps — ever since. 
 
 I have dealt at length with such typical triads 
 of doubt in order to convey the main con- 
 tention — that my own case for Christianity 
 is rational ; but it is not simple. It is an accu- 
 mvdation of varied facts, like the attitude 
 of the ordinary agnostic. But the ordinary 
 agnostic has got his facts all wrong. He is a 
 non-believer for a multitude of reasons ; but 
 they are untrue reasons. He doubts because the 
 Middle Ages were barbaric , but they weren't ; 
 because Darwinism is demonstrated, but it 
 isn't ; because miracles do not happen, but they 
 do ; because monks were lazy, but they were 
 very industrious ; because nuns are unhappy, 
 but they are particularly cheerful ; because 
 Christian art was sad and pale, but it was 
 picked out in peculiarly bright colours and gay 
 with gold ; because modern science is moving 
 away from the supernatural, but it isn't, it 
 is moving towards the supernatural with the 
 rapidity of a railway train. 
 
 But among these million facts all flowing one 
 way there is, of course, one question sufficiently 
 solid and separate to be treated briefly, but by 
 275 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 itself; I mean the objective occurrence of the 
 supernatural. In another chapter I have in- 
 dicated the fallacy of the ordinary supposition 
 that the world must be impersonal because it is 
 orderly. A person is just as likely to desire 
 an orderly thing as a disorderly thing. But 
 my own positive conviction that personal 
 creation is more conceivable than material fate, 
 is, I admit, in a sense, undiscussable. I will not 
 call it a faith or an intuition, for those words 
 are mixed up with mere emotion, it is strictly an 
 intellectual conviction ; but it is z primary intel- 
 lectual conviction like the certainty of self or 
 the good of living. Any one who likes, therie- 
 fore, may call my'belief in God merely mystical ; 
 the phrase is not worth fighting about. But 
 my belief that miracles have happened in 
 human history is not a mystical belief at all ; 
 I believe in them upon human evidence as 1 
 do in the discovery of America. Upon this 
 point there is a simple logical fact that only 
 requires to be stated and cleared up. Somehow 
 or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that 
 the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly 
 and fairly, while believers in miracles accept 
 them only in connection with some dogma. 
 The fact is quite the other way. The 
 believers in miracles accept them (rightly or 
 276 
 
Authority and ike Adventurer 
 
 wrongly) because they have evidence for them. 
 The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly 
 or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against 
 them. The open, obvious, democratic thing is 
 to believe an old apple-woman when she bears 
 testimony to a miracle, just as you believe an 
 old apple-woman when she bears testimony to 
 a murder. The plain, popular course is to trust 
 the peasant's word about the ghost exactly as 
 far as you trust the peasant's word about the 
 landlord. Being a peasant he will probably 
 have a great deal of healthy agnosticism about 
 both. StiU you could fill the British Museum 
 with evidence uttered by the peasant, and 
 given in favour of the ghost. If it comes to 
 human testimony there is a choking cataract 
 of human testimony in favour of the super- 
 natural. If you reject it, you can only 
 mean one of two things. You reject the 
 peasant's story about the ghost either because 
 the man is a peasant or because the story is a 
 ghost story. That is, you either deny the main 
 principle of democracy, or you affirm the main 
 principle of materialism — the abstract im- 
 possibility of miracle. You have a perfect 
 right to do so ; but in that case you are the 
 dogmatist It is we Christians who accept all 
 actual evidence — it is you rationalists who 
 277 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 refuse actual evidence, being constrained to do 
 so by your creed. But I am not constrained 
 by any creed in the matter, and looking im- 
 partially into certain miracles of mediaeval and 
 modern times, I have come to the conclusion 
 that they occurred. All argument against these 
 plain facts is always argument in a circle. If 
 I say, " Mediasval documents attest certain 
 miracles as much as they attest certain battles," 
 they answer, " But medisevals were super- 
 stitious " ; if I want to know in what they 
 were superstitious, the only ultimate answer is 
 that they believed in the miracles. If I say 
 "a peasant saw a ghost," I am told, "But 
 peasants are so credulous." If I ask, " Why 
 credulous ? " the only answer is — that they see 
 ghosts. Iceland is impossible because only stupid 
 sailors have seen it ; and the sailors are 
 only stupid because they say they have seen 
 Iceland. It is only fair to add that there is 
 another argument that the unbeliever may 
 rationally use against miracles, though he him- 
 self generally forgets to use it. 
 
 He may say that there has been in many 
 miraculous stories a notion of spiritual pre- 
 paration and acceptance : in short, that the 
 miracle could only come to him who believed 
 in it. It may be so, and if it is so how are 
 278 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 we to test it ? If we are inquiring whether 
 certain results follow faith, it is useless to 
 repeat wearily that (if they happen) they do 
 follow faith. If faith is one of the conditions, 
 those without faith have a most healthy right 
 to laugh. But they have no right to judge. 
 Being a believer may be, if you like, as bad 
 as being drunk ; still if we were extracting 
 psychological facts from drunkards, it would be 
 absurd to be always taunting them with having 
 been drunk. Suppose we were investigating 
 whether angry men really saw a red mist before 
 their eyes. Suppose sixty excellent house- 
 holders swore that when angry they had seen 
 this crimson cloud : surely it would be ab- 
 surd to answer " Oh, but you admit you were 
 angry at the time." They might reasonably 
 rejoin (in a stentorian chorus), "How the 
 blazes could we discover, without being angry, 
 whether angry people see red ? " So the 
 saints and ascetics might rationally reply, 
 " Suppose that the question is whether be- 
 lievers can see visions — even then, if you 
 are interested in visions it is no point to 
 object to believers." You are still arguing in 
 a circle — in that old mad circle with which 
 this book began. 
 
 The question of whether miracles ever occur 
 279 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 is a question of common sense and of ordinary 
 historical imagination : not of any final physical 
 experiment. One may here surely dismiss that 
 quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks 
 about the need for " scientific conditions " in 
 connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. 
 If we are asking whether a dead soul can com- 
 municate with a living it is ludicrous to insist 
 that it shall be under conditions in which no 
 two living souls in their senses would seriously 
 communicate with each other. The fact that 
 ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the 
 existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers 
 prefer darkness disproves the existence of love. 
 If you choose to say, " I will believe that Miss 
 Brown called her fianci a periwinkle or any 
 other endearing term, if she will repeat the word 
 before seventeen psychologists," then I shall 
 reply, " Very well, if those are your conditions, 
 you will never get the truth, for she certainly 
 will not say it." It is just as unscientific as it 
 is unphilosophical to be surprised that in an 
 unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary 
 sympathies do not arise. It is as if I said that 
 I could not tell if there was a fog because the 
 air was not clear enough ; or as if I insisted on 
 perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse. 
 As a common-sense conclusion, such as those 
 280 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 to which we come about sex or about midnight 
 (well knowing that many details must in their 
 own nature be concealed) I conclude that miracles 
 do happen. I am forced to it by a conspiracy 
 of facts : the fact that the men who encounter 
 elves or angels are not the mystics and the 
 morbid dreamers, but fishermen, farmers, and 
 all men at once coarse and cautious ; the fact 
 that we all know men who testify to spiritualist 
 incidents but are not spiritualists ; the fact that 
 science itself admits such things more and more 
 every day. Science will even admit the Ascen- 
 sion if you call it Levitation, and will very 
 likely admit the Resurrection when it has 
 thought of another word for it. I suggest the 
 Reg^vanisation. But the strongest of all is 
 the dilemma above mentioned, that these super- 
 natural things are never denied except on the 
 basis either of anti-democracy or of materialist 
 dogmatism — 1 may say materialist mysticism. 
 The sceptic always takes one of the two posi- 
 tions ; either an ordinary man need not be 
 believed, or an extraordinary event must not be 
 believed. For I hope we may dismiss the 
 argument against wonders attempted in the 
 mere recapitulation of frauds, of swindling 
 mediums or trick miracles. That is not an 
 argument at all, good or bad. A false ghost 
 
 281 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 disproves the reality of ghosts exactly as much 
 as a forged banknote disproves the existence of 
 the Bank of England — if anything, it proves 
 its existence. 
 
 Given this conviction that the spiritual phe- 
 nomena do occur (my evidence for which is 
 complex but rational), we then collide with one 
 of the worst mental evils of the age. The 
 greatest disaster of the nineteenth century 
 was this : that men began to use the word 
 " spiritual " as the same as the word " good." 
 They thought that to grow in refinement and 
 uncorporeality was to grow in virtue. When 
 scientific evolution was announced, some feared 
 that it would encourage mere animality. It did 
 worse : it encouraged mere spirituality. It 
 taught men to think that so long as they were 
 passing from the ape they were going to the 
 angel. But you can .pass from the ape and go 
 to the devil. A man of genius, very typical of 
 that time of bewilderment, expressed it per- 
 fectly. Benjamin Disraeli was right when he 
 said he was on the side of the angels. He was 
 indeed ; he was on the side of the fallen angels. 
 He was not on the side of any mere appetite or 
 animal brutality ; but he was on the side of all 
 the imperialism of the princes of the abyss ; he 
 was on the side of arrogance and mystery, and 
 282 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 contempt of all obvious good. Between this 
 sunken pride and the towering humilities of 
 heaven there are, one must suppose, spirits of 
 shapes and sizes. Man, in encountering them, 
 must make much the same mistakes that he 
 makes in encountering any other varied types 
 in any other distant continent. It must be 
 hard at first to know who is supreme and who 
 is subordinate. If a shade arose from the 
 under world, and stared at Piccadilly, that 
 shade would not quite understand the idea of 
 an ordinary closed carriage. He would sup- 
 pose that the coachman on the box was a 
 triumphant conqueror, dragging behind him a 
 kicking and imprisoned captive. So, if we see 
 spiritual facts for the first time, we may mis- 
 take who is uppermost. It is not enough to 
 find the gods ; they are obvious ; we must 
 find God, the real chief of the gods. We must 
 have a long historic experience in supernatural 
 phenomena — in order to discover which are 
 really natural. In this light I find the history 
 of Christianity, and even of its Hebrew origins, 
 quite practical and clear. It does not trouble 
 me to be told that the Hebrew god was one 
 among many. I know he was, without any 
 research to tell me so. Jehovah and Baal 
 looked equally important, just as the sun and 
 283 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 the moon looked the same size. It is only 
 slowly that we learn that the sun is immeasur- 
 ably our master, and the small moon only our 
 satellite. Believing that there is a world of 
 spirits, I shall walk in it as I do in the world of 
 men, looking for the thing that 1 like and think 
 good. Just as I should seek in a desert for clean 
 water, or toil at the North Pole to make a com- 
 fortable fire, so I shall search the land of void and 
 vision until I find something fresh like water, 
 and comforting like fire ; until I find some 
 place in eternity, where I am literally at home. 
 And there is only one such place to be found. 
 
 I have now said enough to show (to any one 
 to whom such an explanation is essential) that 
 I have in the ordinary arena of apologetics, a 
 ground of belief. In pure records of experi- 
 ment (if these be taken democratically without 
 contempt or favour) there is evidence first, 
 that miracles happen, and second that the 
 nobler miracles belong to our tradition. But 
 I will not pretend that this curt discussion is 
 my real reason for accepting Christianity instead 
 of taking the moral good of Christianity as I 
 should take it out of Confucianism. 
 
 I have another far more solid and central 
 ground for submitting to it as a faith, in- 
 stead of merely picking up hints from it as a 
 284 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 scheme. And that is this : that the Christian 
 Church in its practical relation to my soul is a 
 living teacher, not a dead one. It not only 
 certainly taught me yesterday, but will almost 
 certainly teach me to-morrow. Once I saw 
 suddenly the meaning of the shape of the cross ; 
 some day I may see suddenly the meaning of 
 the shape of the mitre. One fine morning I 
 saw why windows were pointed ; some fine 
 morning I may see why priests were shaven. 
 Plato has told you a truth ; but Plato is dead. 
 Shakespeare has startled you with an image ; 
 but Shakespeare will not startle you with any 
 more. But imagine what it would be to live 
 with such men still living, to know that Plato 
 might break out with an original lecture to- 
 morrow, or that at any moment Shakespeare 
 might shatter everything with a single song. 
 The man who lives in contact with what he 
 believes to be a living Church is a man always 
 expecting to meet Plato and Shakespeare to- 
 morrow at breakfast. He is always expecting 
 to see some truth that he has never seen 
 before. There is one only other parallel to 
 this position ; and that is the parallel of the 
 life in which we all began. When your 
 father told you, walking about the garden, that 
 bees stung or that roses smelt sweet, you did 
 
 28s 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 not talk of taking the best out of his philosophy. 
 When the bees stung you, you did not call it 
 an entertaining coincidence. When the rose 
 smelt sweet you did not say " My father is a 
 rude, barbaric symbol, enshrining (perhaps un- 
 consciously) the deep delicate truths that flowers 
 smell." No : you believed your father, because 
 you had found him to be a living fountain of 
 facts, a thing that really knew more than you ; 
 a thing that would tell you truth to-morrow, 
 as well as to-day. And if this was true of your 
 father, it was even truer of your mother ; at 
 least it was true of mine, to whom this book is 
 dedicated. Now, when society is in a rather 
 futile fuss about the subjection of women, will 
 no one say how much every man owes to the 
 tyranny and privilege of women, to the fact 
 that they alone rule education until education 
 becomes futile : for a boy is only sent to be 
 taught at school when it is too late to teach 
 him anything. The real thing has been done 
 already, and thank God it is nearly always done 
 by women. Every man is womanised, merely 
 by being born. They talk of the masculine 
 woman ; but every man is a feminised man. 
 And if ever men walk to Westminster to protest 
 against this female privilege, I shall not join 
 their procession. 
 
 286 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 For I remember with certainty this fixed 
 psychological fact ; that the very time when 
 I was most under a woman's authority, I was 
 most full of flame and adventure. Exactly 
 because when my mother said that ants bit 
 they did bite, and because snow did come in 
 winter (as she said) ; therefore the whole world 
 was to me a fairyland of wonderful fulfilments, 
 and it was like living in some Hebraic age, 
 when prophecy after prophecy came true. I 
 went out as a child into the garden, and it was 
 a terrible place to me, precisely because I had a 
 clue to it : if I had held no clue it would not 
 have been terrible, but tame. A mere unmean- 
 ing wilderness is not even impressive. But the 
 garden of childhood was fascinating, exactly 
 because everything had a fixed meaning which 
 could be found out in its turn. Inch by inch 
 I might discover what was the object of the 
 ugly shape called a rake ; or form some shadowy 
 conjecture as to why my parents kept a cat. 
 
 So, since I have accepted Christendom as 
 a mother and not merely as a chance example, 
 I have found Europe and the world once 
 more like the little garden where I stared at 
 the symbolic shapes of cat and rake ; I 
 look at everything with the old elvish igno- 
 rance and expectancy. This or that rite or 
 
 287 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 doctrine may look as ugly and extraordinary 
 as a rake ; but I have found by experience 
 that such things end somehow in grass and 
 flowers. A clergyman may be apparently as 
 useless as a cat, but he is also as fascinating, 
 for there must be some strange reason for 
 his existence. I give one instance out of 
 a hundred ; I have not myself any instinc- 
 tive kinship with that enthusiasm for physical 
 virginity, which has certainly been a note 
 of historic Christianity. But when I look 
 not at myself but at the world, I perceive 
 that this enthusiasm is not only a note of 
 Christianity, but a note of Paganism, a note of 
 high human nature in many spheres. The 
 Greeks felt virginity when they carved Artemis, 
 the Romans when they robed the vestals, the 
 worst and wildest of the great Elizabethan 
 playwrights clung to the literal purity of a 
 woman as to the central pillar of the world. 
 Above all, the modern world (even while 
 mocking sexual innocence) has flung itself 
 into a generous idolatry of sexual innocence 
 — the great modern worship of children. 
 For any man who loves children will agree 
 that their peculiar beauty is hurt by a hint of 
 physical sex. With all this human experience, 
 allied with the Christian authority, I simply 
 288 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 conclude that I am wrong, and the church 
 right ; or rather that I am defective, while the 
 church is universal. It takes all sorts to make 
 a church ; she does not ask me to be celibate. 
 But the fact that I have no appreciation of 
 the celibates, I accept like the fact that I have 
 no ear for music. The best human experi- 
 ence is against me, as it is on the subject of 
 Bach. Celibacy is one flower in my father's 
 garden, of which I have not been told the 
 sweet or terrible name. But I may be told it 
 any day. 
 
 This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason 
 for accepting the religion and not merely the 
 scattered and secular truths out of the religion. 
 I do it because the thing has not merely told 
 this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself 
 as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies 
 say the things that plainly seem to be true ; 
 only this philosophy has again and again said 
 the thing that does not seem to be true, but is 
 true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing 
 where it is not attractive ; it turns out to be 
 right, like my father in the garden. Theo- 
 sophists, for instance, will preach an obviously 
 attractive idea like re-incarnation ; but if we 
 wait for its logical results, they are spiritual 
 superciliousness and the cruelty of caste. 
 289 T 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 For if a man is a beggar by his own pre-natal 
 sins, people will tend to despise the beggar. 
 But Christianity preaches an obviously un- 
 attractive idea, such as original sin ; but when 
 we wait for its results, they are pathos and 
 brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and 
 pity ; for only with original sin we can at once 
 pity the beggar and distrust the king. Men of 
 science offer us health, an obvious benefit ; it 
 is only afterwards that we discover that by 
 health, they mean bodily slavery and spiritual 
 tedium. Orthodoxy makes us jump by the 
 sudden brink of hell ; it is only afterwards that 
 we realise that jumping was an athletic exercise 
 highly beneficial to our health. It is only 
 afterwards that we realise that this danger is 
 the root of all drama and romance. The 
 strongest argument for the divine grace is 
 simply its ungraciousness. The unpopular 
 parts of Christianity turn out when examined 
 to be the very props of the people. The outer 
 ring of Christianity is a rigid guard of ethical 
 abnegations and professional priests ; but inside 
 that inhuman guard you will find the old 
 human life dancing like children, and drinking 
 wine like men ; for Christianity is the only 
 frame for pagan freedom. But in the modern 
 philosophy the case is opposite ; it is its outef 
 290 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 ring that is obviously artistic and emancipated ; 
 its despair is within. 
 
 And its despair is this, that it does not really 
 believe that there is any meaning in the 
 universe ; therefore it cannot hope to find 
 any romance ; its romances will have no plots. 
 A man cannot expect any adventures in the 
 land of anarchy. But a man can expect any 
 number of adventures if he goes travelling 
 in the land of authority. One can find no 
 meanings in a jungle of scepticism ; but the 
 man wiU find more and more meanings who 
 walks through a forest of doctrine and design. 
 Here everything has a story tied to its tail, 
 like the tools or pictures in my father's house ; 
 for it is my father's house. I end where J 
 began — at the right end. I have entered at 
 least the gate of all good philosophy. I have 
 come into my second childhood. 
 
 But this larger and more adventurous 
 Christian universe has one final mark difficult 
 to express ; yet as a conclusion of the whole 
 matter I will attempt to express it. All the 
 real argument about religion turns on the 
 question of whether a man who was born up- 
 side down can tell when he comes right way 
 up. The primary paradox of Christianity is 
 that the ordinary condition of man is not his 
 291 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 sane or sensible condition ; that the normal 
 itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost 
 philosophy of the Fall, In Sir Oliver Lodge's 
 interesting new Catechism, the first two 
 questions were : " What are you ? " and 
 "What, then, is the meaning of the Fall of 
 Man ? " I remember amusing myself by 
 writing my own answers to the questions ; but 
 I soon found that they were very broken and 
 agnostic answers. To the question, " What are 
 you ? " I could only answer, " God knows." 
 And to the question, " What is meant by the 
 Fall ? " I could answer with complete sincerity, 
 *' That whatever I am, I am not myself." This 
 is the prime paradox of our religion ; some- 
 thing that we have never in any full sense 
 known, is not only better than ourselves, but 
 even more natural to us than ourselves. And 
 there is really no test of this except the merely 
 experimental one with which these pages began, 
 the test of the padded cell and the open door. 
 It is only since I have known orthodoxy that I 
 have known mental emancipation. But, in 
 conclusion, it has one special application to the 
 ultimate idea of joy. 
 
 It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy 
 and Christianity of sorrow ; it would be just as 
 easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow and 
 29a 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean 
 nothing and lead nowhere. Everything human 
 must have in it both joy and sorrow ; the only 
 matter of interest is the manner in which the 
 two things are balanced or divided. And the 
 really interesting thing is this, that the pagan 
 was (in the main) happier and happier as he 
 approached the earth, but sadder and sadder as 
 he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the 
 best Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus 
 or Theocritus, is, indeed, an eternal gaiety never 
 to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But 
 it is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not 
 about its origin. To the pagan the small 
 things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking 
 out of the mountain ; but the broad things are 
 as bitter as the sea. When the pagan looks at 
 the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. 
 Behind the gods, who are merely despotic, sit 
 the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the fates are 
 worse than deadly ; they are dead. And when 
 rationalists say that the ancient world was more 
 enlightened than the Christian, from their point 
 of view they are right. For when they say 
 *' enlightened " they mean darkened with incur- 
 able despair. It is profoundly true that the ancient 
 world was more modern than the Christian. 
 The common bond is in the fact that ancients 
 293 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 and moderns have both been miserable about 
 existence, about everything, while mediaevals 
 were happy about that at least. I freely grant 
 that the pagans, like the moderns, were only 
 miserable about everything — they were quite 
 jolly about everything else. I concede that the 
 Christians of the Middle Ages were only at peace 
 about everything — they were at war about 
 everything else. But if the question turn on 
 the primary pivot of the cosmos, then there 
 was more cosmic contentment in the narrow 
 and bloody streets of Florence than in the 
 theatre of Athens or the open garden of 
 Epicurus. Giotto lived in a gloomier town 
 than Euripides, but he lived in a gayer universe. 
 The mass of men have been forced to be gay 
 about the little things, but sad about the big 
 ones. Nevertheless (I offer my last dogma 
 defiantly) it is not native to man to be so. 
 Man is more himself, man is more manlike, 
 when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and 
 grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an 
 innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame 
 of mind ; praise should be the permanent 
 pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an 
 emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious 
 labour by which all things live. Yet, according 
 to the apparent estate of man as seen by the 
 294 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 pagan or the agnostic, this primary need of 
 human nature can never be fulfilled. Joy ought 
 to be expansive ; but for the agnostic it must 
 be contracted, it must cling to one corner of 
 the world. Grief ought to be a concentration ; 
 but for the agnostic its desolation is spread 
 through an unthinkable eternity. This is what 
 I call being born upside down. The sceptic 
 may truly be said to be topsy-turvy ; for his 
 feet are dancing upwards in idle ecstacies, while 
 his brain is in the abyss. To the modern man 
 the heavens are actually below the earth. The 
 explanation is simple ; he is standing on his 
 head ; which is a very weak pedestal to stand 
 on. But when he has found his feet again he 
 knows it. Christianity satisfies suddenly and 
 perfectly man's ancestral instinct for being the 
 right way up ; satisfies it supremely in this ; 
 that by its creed joy becomes something gigantic 
 and sadness something special and small. The 
 vavdt above us is not deaf because the universe 
 is an idiot ; the silence is not the heardess 
 silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather 
 the silence around us is a small and pitiful 
 stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick room. 
 We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of 
 merciful comedy : because the frantic energy 
 of divine things would knock us down like a 
 295 
 
Orthodoxy 
 
 drunken farce. We can take our own tears 
 more lightly than we could take the tremendous 
 levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a 
 starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of 
 the heavens is too loud for us to hear. 
 
 Joy, which was the small publicity of the 
 pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. 
 And as I close this chaotic volume I open again 
 the strange small book from which all Chris- 
 tianity came; and I am again haunted by a 
 kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure 
 which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, 
 as in every other, above all the thinkers who 
 ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was 
 natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and 
 modern, were proud of concealing their tears. 
 He never concealed His tears ; He showed 
 them plainly on His open face at any daily 
 sight, such as the far sight of His native city. 
 Yet He concealed something. Solemn super- 
 men and imperial diplomatists are proud of 
 restraining their anger. He never restrained 
 His anger. He flung furniture down the front 
 steps of the Temple, and asked men how they 
 expected to escape the damnation of Hell. 
 Yet He restrained something, I say it with 
 reverence ; there was in that shattering per- 
 sonality a thread that must be called shyness. 
 296 
 
Authority and the Adventurer 
 
 There was something that He hid from all men 
 when He went up a mountain to pray. There 
 was something that He covered constantly by 
 abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There 
 was some one thing that was too great for God 
 to show us when He walked upon our earth ; 
 and I have sometimes fancied that it was His 
 mirth. 
 
 297 
 
FOURTH EDITION 
 
 HERETICS 
 
 By GILBERT K. CHESTERTON 
 
 Author of " The Napoleon of Netting Hill " 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5^. net 
 
 SOME PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 World, — "Thoroughly and exuberantly Chestertonian, 
 bristling with quaint epigram, droll illustration, and daring 
 paradox, and marked by a sustained brilliancy of criticism 
 and analysis." 
 
 Daily Telegraph. — « Mr. Chesterton is an original and 
 unconventional thinker. These papers are in his accus- 
 tomed vein ; bright, whimsical, clever, and amusing." 
 
 Daily News. — "There is here all that joyfulness in 
 action, easy brilliance, and skill at the presentation of a 
 case which have made this writer so delightful a con- 
 troversialist." 
 
 Manchester Guardian. — " Thoroughly sane and virile." 
 
 Echo. — " Passages of marvellous power." 
 
 E'vening Standard. — " Mr. Chesterton's intellectual gam- 
 bols are an increasing joy." 
 
 Graphic. — " The brilliant maker of paradox finds abun- 
 dant scope for his wayward and delightful humour in his 
 present volume. . . . Every page contains some witty 
 phrase, some daring flight of fancy, or some startling turn 
 of thought." 
 
 Onlooker. — " A book of gorgeous paradoxes and brilliant 
 epigram." 
 
 Clarion. — " A collection of delightful essays bristling with 
 epigrams and flashes of humour. ... A clever, healthy, 
 inspiring book, and will greatly add to the reputation the 
 author has already won by his 'Napoleon of Netting Hill." " 
 
 Weekly Scotsman. — " This brilliant book . . . scintillat- 
 ing epigram and unorthodox thought." 
 
 NeTJucastle Daily Chronicle. — " A volume which makes 
 delightful reading, and the more delightful because it is 
 impossible to read it without encountering in every page — 
 in every phrase almost — abundant food for thought . . . 
 his brilliant wit, his verbal and mental agility are as evident 
 as they are in everything he writes." 
 
 Morning Leader. — " Mr. Chesterton is as inimitable, as 
 elusive, as pungent as ever. His wit plays with unimpaired 
 vivacity, his convictions grow more and more genuine and 
 surprising." 
 
By G. K. CHESTERTON 
 
 THE NAPOLEON OF 
 NOTTING HILL 
 
 With Seven Illustrations and a Cover Design by 
 W. Grantham Robertson, and a Map of the 
 Seat of War. Crown 8vo. 6x. 
 
 Mr. James Douglas, in the Star. — " An allegorical romance, 
 a didactic fantasy, a humorous whimsy. It is not easy to say 
 what it means ; Mr. Chesterton himself probably does not 
 know." „ 
 
 Daily Mail. — ' ' Mr. Chesterton, as our laughing philosopher, 
 is at his best in this delightful fantasy." 
 
 Westminster Gazette. — " It is undeniably clever. It scintil- 
 lates — that is exactly the right word — with bright and epigram- 
 matic observations, and it is written throughout with undoubted 
 literary skill." 
 
 World. — ". . . as delightful as a second ' Lilliput Levee ' 
 or an ' Alice in Wonderland ' grown up, come out, and edited 
 by the author of ' The Battle of Dorking,' or ' Nelson Steer- 
 forth.' The book deserves to be read eagerly, first for the 
 general effect, which is bewildering witty ; secondly, for the 
 tit-bits, which are benignly wise." 
 
 Referee. — " Mr. Chesterton is one of the few modem writers 
 who have a style — and full of humour. It would be difficult 
 to put this book down until you had finished it." 
 
 Daily Chronicle. — "It is quite needless to know what Mr. 
 Chesterton means. All that concerns us is that he has written 
 a vastly entertaining book, which should be breathlessly enjoyed 
 at Notting Hill and elsewhere." 
 
 Daily News. — " If the test of the success of any book is the 
 pleasure it gives in the reading, this first novel of Mr. Chesterton 
 must be pronounced a veritable triumph. The book is at once 
 a fantastic romance, a rich mine of humour, and a kind of 
 allegory of all the contentions which the author has been main- 
 taining so trenchantly since his first appearance in literature." 
 
STRAY LEAVES 
 
 By HERBERT PAUL, M.R 
 
 Crown 8vo, 5/. net. Second Edition. 
 PRESS OPINIONS 
 
 TtfKes.—" Mr. Paul . . . quotes the country squire who said,' There 
 are some books which it is a positive pleasure to read.' We ourselves put 
 Mr. Paul's book of essays in this class. The present volume, ' Stray 
 Leaves/ is as rich in pleasure-giving qualities as its predecessor, ' Men 
 and Letters.'" 
 
 Daily Gra^fac. — " We have seldom met with so brilliant a book of 
 essays as ' Stray Leaves.' " 
 
 Mr. Jamks Douglas in the Star. — "Mr. Herbert Paul's essays are 
 oases in the desert of literature through which the sad critic wanders." 
 
 Sunday News* — ** Undeniably clever and entertaining . . . pro- 
 foundly shrewd and full of insight." 
 
 Pail Mall Gazette.—" This clever and interesting book." 
 
 Manckister Guardian* — *'A style full of wit and epigram, and 
 sparkling with points." 
 
 MEN AND LETTERS 
 
 By HERBERT PAUL 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5/. net. Fourth Edition. 
 
 Daily News. — "Mr. Herbert Paul has done scholars and the reading 
 world in general a high service in publishing this collection of his 
 essays. . . > To writean essay that shall tickle the understanding, as a 
 sauce by Brillat Savarin must have tickled the palate, is a task attempted 
 by many and accomplished by few. Among these few Mr. Paul must be 
 ranked. ... It must be read as a whole by all who appreciate urbanity, 
 humour, and a style which glitters like the point of a rapier wielded by 
 a master of the fence." 
 
 Punch. — " A delightful book of essays. Mr. Paul's book is as light 
 and his style as brilliant as bis reading is wide, and his memory accurate. 
 His fund of good stories is inexhaustible, and his urbanity never fails. 
 On the whole, this book is one of the very best examples of literature 
 on literature and life." 
 
 Star. — *' A volume of critical essays to lose sleep over. . . . There 
 are thirteen essays in this fascinating book, and as one reads each seems 
 
 better than the other I commend this delightful book to all 
 
 lovers of good literature." 
 
 sphere. — "Excellent. . . . Thirteen entertaining essays, therefore a 
 pleasure to read." 
 
 Manchester GwarAfl«. —" Writing papers. They proclaim them- 
 selves to be the work of a scholar who has taken con aniore to journalism, 
 and of a journalist who still cherishes and revels in his scholarship." 
 
 Guardian. — "A delightful book.^ Every one who cares for good 
 literature and good talk should buy it at once." 
 
BOOKS Br VERNON LEE 
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL TRAVELLER: 
 
 Notes on Places. Crown 8vo. 3/. 6d. net. 
 
 spectator.— ^^ Full of humour as well as of artistic interest. . . . No 
 one will question the originality and charm. . . . Vernon Lee has 
 written many delightful things ; but nothing, perhaps, more keenly 
 suggestive and charmingly convincing than the first chapter of her new 
 book." 
 
 HAUNTINGS : Fantastic Stories. Crown 
 8vo. 3J, dd, net. 
 
 Daily Express. — " Such a rare gift of vivid writing as Vernon Lee 
 has would seem to provide the most realistic and picturesque vehicle 
 possible for the telling of tales of the supernatural. . . . Every chapter 
 is glowingly vivid with perfect word-pictures." 
 
 HORTUS VITAE, or, The Hanging 
 Gardens Moralizing Essays. Crown 8vo. 
 3/. 6d. net. 
 
 Times. — '* There are many charming flowers in it . . . the swift to- 
 and-fro of her vivid, capricious mind carries the reader hither and 
 thither at her will, and she has such wise, suggestive things to say. . . . 
 Whenever and wherever she speaks of Italy* the sun shines in this 
 garden of hers, and the south wmd stirs among the roses." 
 
 THE ENCHANTED WOODS, and Other 
 Essays on the Genius of Place. Crown 8vo. 
 3/. (>d. net. 
 
 Outlook. — "The book is one to be enjoyed for its sheer beauty of 
 style by those who have never visited the places described ; but those 
 who have will enjoy the amazing aptness of epithet - . . ; in her 
 extraordinary sensitiveness to modes of time and place, Vernon Lee's 
 attitude recalls that of Mr. Henry James." 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF ROME : Leaves from A 
 Diary. Crown 8vo. y. 6d. net. 
 
 Academy .—-*' \t breathes the very essence and spirit of Rome. . . . 
 Vernon Lee is a master of descriptive writing, but we know no work of 
 hers (nor, for that matter, of any one's) to compare for beauty with 
 many of the exquisite pages among these notes." 
 
 GENIUS LOCI. Crown 8vo. 3^. 6d. net. 
 Second Edition. 
 
 POPE JACYNTH. Crown 8vo. 3^. 6d. net. 
 Second Edition. 
 
 LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS. tT" 
 which is now added, " Ariadne in Mantua." 
 3^. 6d. net. Crown 8vo. 
 
THE CHAMPAGNE STANDARD 
 
 By Mrs. JOHN LANE, Author of KItwyk, &c. 
 
 Crown 8vo. 61. Fourth Edition. 
 
 Tii Triiuiu.—" Mrs. Lane has given her readers not ' fatal wine ' 
 but sparkling champagne of the most excellent quality and most 
 stimulating efifect." « 
 
 Acadrmy. — "Mrs. Lane may congratulate herself on having that 
 blessed sense of humour which is one of the most valuable possessions 
 in life. In any case, Englishwomen should be grateful to her for 
 writing them this delightful, candid book, which is full of original and 
 bright ideas." 
 
 Morning Post. — "Mrs. Lane's 'Champagne' overflows with witty 
 sayings too numerous to cite. . . . Her book will be read again and 
 again." 
 
 Times. — **More men would be found at tea*parties if there were 
 more women who could talk to them as Mrs. Lane talks to the public." 
 
 Deuly Ttlegraph.—" Engagingly easy reading ... an exceptionally 
 pleasing volume." 
 
 Outlook. — " Those lively papers ... in which Mrs. Lane deals with 
 the contrast between English and American life and manners are full of 
 interest and scarcely less full of surprise. . . . For all Mrs. Lane's 
 essays of observation and comparison we have nothing but praise." 
 
 POINTS OF VIEW 
 
 By L. F. AUSTIN 
 
 Crown 8vo. 5/. net. 
 
 Mr. Tighe Hopkins in Daily Chronicle.—''* This volume, perfectly 
 chosen, shows his great range, his humour, his seriousness, his philo- 
 sophy of life that lay heneath his quenchless gaiety, and the uniailing 
 delicacy of his touch. . . . To Mr. Clarence Rook . . . sincere thanks 
 for a memorial volume ideal in its character." 
 
 Tribune. — " There could be no better memorial of the late L. F. 
 Austin than _ this . . . These light and playful^ essays were all well 
 worth collecting and reprinting for their intrinsic merit, as well as for 
 the sake of the urbane and witty man who is gone from among us." 
 
 Mr. James Douglas in Star, — "A delightful selection . . _. Mr, 
 Rook has done his work with affectionate felicity. . . . These six and 
 thirty essays are perfect examples of that Austinesque humour and 
 whim and fantasy that Fleet Street loved so well. . . . Austin was a 
 real essayist, and many of these essays have rare qualities which ought 
 to defy the tooth of time." 
 
 THE WILD FLOWERS OF SELBORNE 
 
 AND OTHER PAPERS 
 
 By the Reverend CANON VAUGHAN 
 
 Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 5J. net. 
 
 MUSIC AND MUSICIANS 
 
 By E. A. BAUGHAN 
 
 Crown 8vo, 5J. net. 
 
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF R. S. 
 HAWKER (Sometime Vicar of Morwenstow), 
 by his Son-in-Law, C. E. Byles. 
 
 With numerous Illustrations, incIudingLithographsby J. Lev Pkthy- 
 BRiDGB,Two Sketches by the Earl of Carlisle, reproductions from con- 
 temporary Prints, Portraits, Photographs, &c. Demy 8vo. js. td. net 
 Athenaum.—" An authoritative and satisfactory biography. Mr. 
 Byles has performed his task — by no means an easy one — with skill and 
 ^ood taste. The book has evidently been with him, as with his pub- 
 lisher, a genuine labour of love." 
 
 CORNISH BALLADS AND OTHER 
 POEMS* By Robert Stephen Hawker. 
 
 Edited, with a Preface, byC. E. Byles. With numerous Illustrations 
 by J. Ley Pethybridge and otherstand a special binding designed 
 from oak carvings in the churches of Morwenstow and Welcombe. 
 Crown 8vo. $s. net. 
 
 This book contains Hawker's complete Poetical works ^ inclttdinff 
 several pieces previotisly uncollected. 
 Globe. — " Unquestionably the most desirable of all editions of 
 Hawker's verse.'* 
 
 FOOTPRINTS OF FORMER MEN in FAR 
 CORNWALL. By Robert Stephen Hawker. 
 
 Edited, with an Introduction, by C. E. Byles, and containing 
 
 numerous Illustrations by J^. Ley Pethybridge. Crown 8vo. s** 
 
 net. [Uniform with "Cornish Ballads."] 
 
 Literary World. — " Reading these sketches, we come' upon passages 
 
 which Ruskin himself might have written. There is in them a rare rich 
 
 flavour of the author's individuality, something of the atmosphere, the 
 
 colour, the rugged grandeur of the coast." 
 
 THE COMING OF LOVE : Rhona Boswell's 
 Story (a Sequel to " Aylwin ") and other Poems. 
 Seventh and Revised Edition, with a Photogravure 
 Portrait of the Author after Rossetti, and a 
 Preface by the Author. Crown 8vo. ;j. net. 
 
 AUGUSTINE THE MAN : A Play. b7" 
 Amelia Rives (Princess Troubetzksy). Crown 
 8vo. 5^. net. 
 
 SONGS TO A SINGER. By Rosa New- 
 MARCH. Crown 8vo. 5^. net. 
 
 LOVE'S TESTAMENT : A Sonnet Se- 
 QUENCE. By G. Constant Lounsbery. Uniform 
 with " An Iseult Idyll and other Poems." Crown 
 8vo. y. 6d. net. 
 
 JOHN LANE, The Bodley Head, Vigo Street, W. 
 
BR121 CM*" ""'™''^"y '-""■'"■y 
 °'*'ll?Hi?aiiiif,)f,,,SillM,..'5- Chesterton. 
 
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 3 1924 029 192 478 
 
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