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