The optimist’s pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness 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 homesick at home.

VI THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable 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 exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.  I give one coarse instance of what I mean.  Suppose some mathematical 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 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 organizing expeditions to find a man’s heart; and when they try to find it, they generally get on the wrong side of him.