orthodoxy

G. K. Chesterton

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.


Pagina de descarga

Book eBook Orthodoxy


Gilbert Keith Chesterton

4 agosto, 2016

update 17 agosto, 2021

Go to the Download page


More eBooks in English


Confession

Confession

Adrienne von Speyr FOREWORD Some years ago I had an experience with the sacrament of penance that I will never forget. It was a Saturday ...
Rome Sweet Home

Rome Sweet Home

Scott and Kimberly Hahn Foreword One of the beautiful and bright-shining stars in the firmament of hope for our desperate days is this couple, Scott ...
An Exorcist Tells His Story

An Exorcist Tells His Story

Gabriele Amorth AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION When the Pope’s Vicar for the Diocese of Rome, Cardinal Ugo Poletti, unexpectedly granted me the faculty of exorcist, I did ...
Theology of the Liturgy

Theology of the Liturgy

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger On the Inaugural Volume of My Collected Works The Second Vatican Council began its work with deliberation on the “Schema on the ...
Return to the Baltic

Return to the Baltic

Hilaire Belloc Return to the Baltic When I was a lad—I had not yet left school—I was taken to see at the Savoy Gilbert and ...
Images of Hope

Images of Hope

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger Foreword In the course of my years in Rome, I was invited again and again by Bavarian Radio to give meditations on ...
The Wisdom of the Poor One of Assisi

The Wisdom of the Poor One of Assisi

Eloi Leclerc Preface The most awesome sentence which has been pronounced against our times may well be this: We have lost our innocence. To say ...
The Great Heresies

The Great Heresies

Hilaire Belloc INTRODUCTION: HERESY What is a heresy, and what is the historical importance of such a thing? Like most modern words, "Heresy" is used ...
The Path to Rome

The Path to Rome

Hilaire Belloc The Path to Rome When that first Proverb-Maker who has imposed upon all peoples by his epigrams and his fallacious half-truths, his empiricism ...
Tolkien: Man and Myth

Tolkien: Man and Myth

Joseph Pearce PREFACE When Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was voted the ‘greatest book of the century’ in a nationwide poll at the beginning ...
Lord of the World By Robert Hugh Benson

Lord of the World By Robert Hugh Benson

Robert Hugh Benson PREFACE I am perfectly aware that this is a terribly sensational book, and open to innumerable criticisms on that account, as well ...
Treatise on Purgatory

Treatise on Purgatory

Saint Catherine of Genoa INTRODUCTION Saint Catherine of Genoa was born in the Vicolo del Filo in that city, in 1447. She was of the ...
Three to Get Married

Three to Get Married

Fulton J. Sheen 1. The Differences Between Sex and Love Love is primarily in the will, not in the emotions or the glands. The will ...
Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade

Via Crucis: A Romance of the Second Crusade

F. Marion Crawford CHAPTER I The sun was setting on the fifth day of May, in the year of our Lord's grace eleven hundred and ...
The Confessions of St. Augustine

The Confessions of St. Augustine

Biography of St. Augustine BOOK ONE IN GOD’S searching presence, Augustine undertakes to plumb the depths of his memory to trace the mysterious pilgrimage of ...
Read Me or Rue it

Read Me or Rue it

Fr. Paul O'Sullivan FOREWARD "READ ME OR RUE IT" This title is somewhat startling. Yet, Dear Reader, if you peruse this little book, you will ...
The Brown Scapular, the Most Powerful Sacramental

The Brown Scapular, the Most Powerful Sacramental

Wearing the Scapular, a Form of Consecration WEARING MARY'S Scapular is a way to consecrate ourselves to Her service. Consecration sets apart a person or ...
Those Who Serve God Should Not Follow The Fashions

Those Who Serve God Should Not Follow The Fashions

1. The Mind of the Catholic Church on Modesty in Dress Often today we hear sensible people complaining about the immodesty in dress that is ...
Mary, Motherhood, and the Home

Mary, Motherhood, and the Home

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen The perfection of all motherhood is Mary, the Mother of Jesus, because she is the only mother in all the world ...
How to Avoid Purgatory

How to Avoid Purgatory

Fr. Paul O’Sullivan Foreword Our Lord came on earth expressly to give us a perfect Redemption. He gave us a Law of Love, a Religion ...
The Story of Annette

The Story of Annette

Robert T. Hart INTRODUCTION What is related in these pages is of the greatest importance. Though the events in question took place in Germany, what ...
The Friendship of Christ

The Friendship of Christ

Robert Hugh Benson It is not good for man to be alone. -- GEN. ii: 18. THE emotion of friendship is amongst the most mighty ...
The Imitation of Christ

The Imitation of Christ

Thomas a Kempis The First Chapter Imitating Christ and Despising All Vanities on Earth HE WHO follows Me, walks not in darkness,” says the Lord ...
The Sinner's Guide

The Sinner’s Guide

Venerable Louis of Granada CHAPTER 1 The First Motive which obliges us to practice Virtue and to serve God: His Being in itself, and the ...
A Letter to the Friends of the Cross

A Letter to the Friends of the Cross

Saint Louis Mary Grignon de Montfort EXCELLENCE OF THE ASSOCIATION 1.  Friends of the Cross, you are like crusaders united to fight against the world; ...
On the Incarnation of the Word of God

On the Incarnation of the Word of God

St. Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria Chapter 1 Creation and the Fall In our former book we dealt fully enough with a few of the chief ...
Introduction to the Devout Life

Introduction to the Devout Life

Saint Francis de Sales Preface Dear reader, I request you to read this Preface for your own satisfaction as well as mine. The flower-girl Glycera ...
Holy Bible

Holy Bible

Holy Bible The 1983 Code of Canon Law entrusts to the Apostolic See and the episcopal conferences the authority to approve translations of the Sacred ...
The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesuchrist

The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesuchrist

Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich Introduction The following meditations will probably rank high among many similar works which the contemplative love of Jesus has produced; but ...
Time for God

Time for God

Jacques Philippe Introduction In the Western Catholic tradition the term “prayer” covers many different activities. The following pages mainly concentrate on mental prayer: prayer that ...
0 comentarios

Dejar un comentario

¿Quieres unirte a la conversación?
Siéntete libre de contribuir!

Deja una respuesta