Orthodoxy

Коллекция текстов · essay

1. Preface
   This book is meant to be a companion to "Heretics," and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of th…
2. 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 so…
3. II the Maniac (1)
   Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember…
4. II the Maniac (2)
   Such is the madman of experience; he is commonly a reasoner, frequently a successful reasoner. Doubtless he could be vanquished in mere rea…
5. III the Suicide of Thought (1)
   The phrases of the street are not only forcible but subtle: for a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition. P…
6. III the Suicide of Thought (2)
   But one more word must be added. At the beginning of this preliminary negative sketch I said that our mental ruin has been wrought by wild…
7. IV the Ethics of Elfland (1)
   When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one…
8. IV the Ethics of Elfland (2)
   This elementary wonder, however, is not a mere fancy derived from the fairy tales; on the contrary, all the fire of the fairy tales is deri…
9. IV the Ethics of Elfland (3)
   But the expansion of which I speak was much more evil than all this. I have remarked that the materialist, like the madman, is in prison; i…
10. V the Flag of the World (1)
    When I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words mysel…
11. V the Flag of the World (2)
    This was the first of the long train of enigmas with which Christianity entered the discussion. And there went with it a peculiarity of whi…
12. VI the Paradoxes of Christianity (1)
    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…
13. VI the Paradoxes of Christianity (2)
    This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was goo…
14. VI the Paradoxes of Christianity (3)
    St. Francis, in praising all good, could be a more shouting optimist than Walt Whitman. St. Jerome, in denouncing all evil, could paint the…
15. VII the Eternal Revolution (1)
    The following propositions have been urged: First, that some faith in our life is required even to improve it; second, that some dissatisfa…
16. VII the Eternal Revolution (2)
    I passed on to the next necessity of any ideal of progress. Some people (as we have said) seem to believe in an automatic and impersonal pr…
17. VII the Eternal Revolution (3)
    Is there any answer to the proposition that those who have had the best opportunities will probably be our best guides? Is there any answer…
18. VIII the Romance of Orthodoxy (1)
    It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness a…
19. VIII the Romance of Orthodoxy (2)
    It is just here that Buddhism is on the side of modern pantheism and immanence. And it is just here that Christianity is on the side of hum…
20. IX Authority and the Adventurer (1)
    The last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality o…
21. IX Authority and the Adventurer (2)
    There is an answer: it is an answer to say that the energy is truly from outside the world; that it is psychic, or at least one of the resu…
22. IX Authority and the Adventurer (3)
    This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religio…