Orthodoxy , livre ebook

The Floating Press - K. Chesterton G.

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

103 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

In Orthodoxy, a classic work of Christian apologetics, G. K. Chesterton writes with the purpose of attempting "an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith can be believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it." Christianity, in Chesterton's original view, is the "answer to a riddle" and the natural solution to our needs, and in this way it is deeply personal rather than an arbitrary truth from outside one's experience. Orthodoxy is the culmination of Chesterton's free-thinking and well-reasoned inquiry as he seeks an explanation to the mystery of being human.

Sujets

Philosophie et théologie

Christianity

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 janvier 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775411628
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

ORTHODOXY
* * *
G. K. CHESTERTON

*

Orthodoxy From a 1908 edition.
ISBN 978-1-775411-62-8
© 2008 THE FLOATING PRESS.
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
Chapter I.— Introduction in Defence of Everything Else Chapter II.— The Maniac Chapter III.— The Suicide of Thought Chapter IV— The Ethics of Elfland Chapter V.— The Flag of the World Chapter VI.— The Paradoxes of Christianity Chapter VII.— The Eternal Revolution Chapter VIII.— The Romance of Orthodoxy Chapter IX.— Authority and the Adventurer
Chapter I.— Introduction in Defence of Everything Else
*
The only possible excuse for this book is that it is an answer to achallenge. Even a bad shot is dignified when he accepts a duel. Whensome time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers, underthe name of "Heretics," several critics for whose intellect I have awarm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S. Street) said that it wasall very well for me to tell everybody to affirm his cosmic theory, butthat I had carefully avoided supporting my precepts with example. "Iwill begin to worry about my philosophy," said Mr. Street, "when Mr.Chesterton has given us his." It was perhaps an incautious suggestion tomake to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblestprovocation. But after all, though Mr. Street has inspired and createdthis book, he need not read it. If he does read it, he will find that inits pages I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set ofmental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state thephilosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it myphilosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it mademe.
I have often had a fancy for writing a romance about an Englishyachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered Englandunder the impression that it was a new island in the South Seas. Ialways find, however, that I am either too busy or too lazy to writethis fine work, so I may as well give it away for the purposes ofphilosophical illustration. There will probably be a general impressionthat the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) toplant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to bethe Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here concerned todeny that he looked a fool. But if you imagine that he felt a fool, orat any rate that the sense of folly was his sole or his dominantemotion, then you have not studied with sufficient delicacy the richromantic nature of the hero of this tale. His mistake was really a mostenviable mistake; and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. Whatcould be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all thefascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humanesecurity of coming home again? What could be better than to have allthe fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting necessity oflanding there? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self upto discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happytears, that it was really old South Wales. This at least seems to me themain problem for philosophers, and is in a manner the main problem ofthis book. How can we contrive to be at once astonished at the world andyet at home in it? How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-leggedcitizens, with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world giveus at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honourof being our own town? To show that a faith or a philosophy is true fromevery standpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a much biggerbook than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument; and thisis the path that I here propose to follow. I wish to set forth my faithas particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for thatmixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightlynamed romance. For the very word "romance" has in it the mystery andancient meaning of Rome. Any one setting out to dispute anything oughtalways to begin by saying what he does not dispute. Beyond stating whathe proposes to prove he should always state what he does not propose toprove. The thing I do not propose to prove, the thing I propose to takeas common ground between myself and any average reader, is thisdesirability of an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full ofa poetical curiosity, a life such as western man at any rate alwaysseems to have desired. If a man says that extinction is better thanexistence or blank existence better than variety and adventure, then heis not one of the ordinary people to whom I am talking. If a man prefersnothing I can give him nothing. But nearly all people I have ever met inthis western society in which I live would agree to the generalproposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combinationof something that is strange with something that is secure. We need soto view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea ofwelcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once beingmerely comfortable. It is this achievement of my creed that I shallchiefly pursue in these pages.
But I have a peculiar reason for mentioning the man in a yacht, whodiscovered 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 notquite see (to tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull. Dullnesswill, however, free me from the charge which I most lament; the chargeof being flippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen todespise most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that thisis the thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing socontemptible as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of theindefensible. If it were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shawlived upon paradox, then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for aman 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 anylie unless he thinks it is the truth. I find myself under the sameintolerable bondage. I never in my life said anything merely because Ithought it funny; though, of course, I have had ordinary humanvain-glory, and may have thought it funny because I had said it. It isone thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, acreature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that therhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looksas if he didn't. One searches for truth, but it may be that one pursuesinstinctively the more extraordinary truths. And I offer this book withthe 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 clowningor a single tiresome joke.
For if this book is a joke it is a joke against me. I am the man whowith the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before. Ifthere is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my ownexpense; for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to setfoot in Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts myelephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think mycase more ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader can accuse me hereof trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this story, and norebel shall hurl me from my throne. I freely confess all the idioticambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all othersolemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I triedto be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I waseighteen hundred years behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfullyjuvenile exaggeration in uttering my truths. And I was punished in thefittest and funniest way, for I have kept my truths: but I havediscovered, not that they were not truths, but simply that they were notmine. When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculousposition of being backed up by all Christendom. It may be, Heavenforgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded ininventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions ofcivilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first tofind England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try tofound a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, Idiscovered that it was orthodoxy.
It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account of this happyfiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy to read how I graduallylearnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of somedominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt from mycatechism—if I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be someentertainment in reading how I found at last in an anarchist club or aBabylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish church.If any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the field orthe phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains ofyouth came together in a certain order to produce a certain convictionof Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But there is ineverything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, andnothing 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.