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.