Orthodoxy | Page 4

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.
But I have a peculiar reason for mentioning the man in a yacht, who
discovered 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 not
quite see (to tell the truth) how it can avoid being dull. Dulness will,
however, free me from the charge which I most lament; the charge of
being flippant. Mere light sophistry is the thing that I happen to despise
most of all things, and it is perhaps a wholesome fact that this is the

thing of which I am generally accused. I know nothing so contemptible
as a mere paradox; a mere ingenious defence of the indefensible. If it
were true (as has been said) that Mr. Bernard Shaw lived upon paradox,
then he ought to be a mere common millionaire; for a man 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 any lie unless he thinks
it is the truth. I find myself under the same intolerable bondage. I never
in my life said anything merely because I thought it funny; though of
course, I have had ordinary human vainglory, and may have thought it
funny because I had said it. It is one thing to describe an interview with
a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing
to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the
fact that he looks as if he didn't. One searches for truth, but it may be
that one pursues instinctively the more extraordinary truths. And I offer
this book with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate
what