First and Last Things | Page 4

THE INSTRUMENT.
CHAPTER 1.

5. THE CLASSIFICATORY ASSUMPTION.
CHAPTER 1.
6. EMPTY TERMS.
CHAPTER 1.
7. NEGATIVE TERMS.
CHAPTER 1.
8. LOGIC STATIC AND LIFE KINETIC.
CHAPTER 1.
9. PLANES AND DIALECTS OF THOUGHT.
CHAPTER 1.
10. PRACTICAL CONCLUSIONS FROM THESE CONSIDERATIONS.
CHAPTER 1.
11. BELIEFS.
CHAPTER 1.
12. SUMMARY.
BOOK 2. OF BELIEFS.
CHAPTER 2.
1. MY PRIMARY ACT OF FAITH.
CHAPTER 2.
2. ON USING THE NAME OF GOD.
CHAPTER 2.
3. FREE WILL AND PREDESTINATION.
CHAPTER 2.

4. A PICTURE OF THE WORLD OF MEN.
CHAPTER 2.
5. THE PROBLEM OF MOTIVES THE REAL PROBLEM OF LIFE.
CHAPTER 2.
6. A REVIEW OF MOTIVES.
CHAPTER 2.
7. THE SYNTHETIC MOTIVE.
CHAPTER 2.
8. THE BEING OF MANKIND.
CHAPTER 2.
9. INDIVIDUALITY AN INTERLUDE.
CHAPTER 2.
10. THE MYSTIC ELEMENT.
CHAPTER 2.
11. THE SYNTHESIS.
CHAPTER 2.
12. OF PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.
CHAPTER 2.
13. A CRITICISM OF CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER 2.
14. OF OTHER RELIGIONS.
CHAPTER 2.
15.

BOOK 3. OF GENERAL CONDUCT.
CHAPTER 3.
1. CONDUCT FOLLOWS FROM BELIEF.
CHAPTER 3.
2. WHAT IS GOOD?
CHAPTER 3.
3. SOCIALISM.
CHAPTER 3.
4. A CRITICISM OF CERTAIN FORMS OF SOCIALISM.
CHAPTER 3.
5. HATE AND LOVE.
CHAPTER 3.
6. THE PRELIMINARY SOCIAL DUTY.
CHAPTER 3.
7. WRONG WAYS OF LIVING.
CHAPTER 3.
8. SOCIAL PARASITISM AND CONTEMPORARY INJUSTICES.
CHAPTER 3.
9. THE CASE OF THE WIFE AND MOTHER.
CHAPTER 3.
10. ASSOCIATIONS.
CHAPTER 3.
11. OF AN ORGANIZED BROTHERHOOD.

CHAPTER 3.
12. CONCERNING NEW STARTS AND NEW RELIGIONS.
CHAPTER 3.
13. THE IDEA OF THE CHURCH.
CHAPTER 3.
14. OF SECESSION.
CHAPTER 3.
15. A DILEMMA.
CHAPTER 3.
16. A COMMENT.
CHAPTER 3.
17. WAR.
CHAPTER 3.
18. WAR AND COMPETITION.
CHAPTER 3.
19. MODERN WAR.
CHAPTER 3.
20. OF ABSTINENCES AND DISCIPLINES.
CHAPTER 3.
21. ON FORGETTING, AND THE NEED OF PRAYER, READING, DISCUSSION
AND WORSHIP.
CHAPTER 3.
22. DEMOCRACY AND ARISTOCRACY.
CHAPTER 3.

23. ON DEBTS OF HONOUR.
CHAPTER 3.
24. THE IDEA OF JUSTICE.
CHAPTER 3.
25. OF LOVE AND JUSTICE.
CHAPTER 3.
26. THE WEAKNESS OF IMMATURITY.
CHAPTER 3.
27. POSSIBILITY OF A NEW ETIQUETTE.
CHAPTER 3.
28. SEX.
CHAPTER 3.
29. THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE.
CHAPTER 3.
30. CONDUCT IN RELATION TO THE THING THAT IS.
CHAPTER 3.
31. CONDUCT TOWARDS TRANSGRESSORS.
BOOK 4. SOME PERSONAL THINGS.
CHAPTER 4.
1. PERSONAL LOVE AND LIFE.
CHAPTER 4.
2. THE NATURE OF LOVE.
CHAPTER 4.

3. THE WILL TO LOVE.
CHAPTER 4.
4. LOVE AND DEATH.
CHAPTER 4.
5. THE CONSOLATION OF FAILURE.
CHAPTER 4.
6. THE LAST CONFESSION.

INTRODUCTION.
Recently I set myself to put down what I believe. I did this with no idea of making a book,
but at the suggestion of a friend and to interest a number of friends with whom I was
associated. We were all, we found, extremely uncertain in our outlook upon life, about
our religious feelings and in our ideas of right and wrong. And yet we reckoned ourselves
people of the educated class and some of us talk and lecture and write with considerable
confidence. We thought it would be of very great interest to ourselves and each other if
we made some sort of frank mutual confession. We arranged to hold a series of meetings
in which first one and then another explained the faith, so far as he understood it, that was
in him. We astonished ourselves and our hearers by the irregular and fragmentary nature
of the creeds we produced, clotted at one point, inconsecutive at another, inconsistent and
unconvincing to a quite unexpected degree. It would not be difficult to caricature one of
those meetings; the lecturer floundering about with an air of exquisite illumination, the
audience attentive with an expression of thwarted edification upon its various brows. For
my own part I grew so interested in planning my lecture and in joining up point and point,
that my notes soon outran the possibilities of the hour or so of meeting for which I was
preparing them. The meeting got only a few fragments of what I had to say, and made
what it could of them. And after that was over I let myself loose from limits of time and
length altogether and have expanded these memoranda into a book.
It is as it stands now the frank confession of what one man of the early Twentieth
Century has found in life and himself, a confession just as frank as the limitations of his
character permit; it is his metaphysics, his religion, his moral standards, his uncertainties
and the expedients with which he has met them. On every one of these departments and
aspects I write--how shall I put it?--as an amateur. In every section of my subject there
are men not only of far greater intellectual power and energy than I, but who have
devoted