Orthodoxy | Page 5

I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know), as a piece of
poor clowning or a single tiresome joke.
For if this book is a joke it is a joke against me. I am the man who with
the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before. If there
is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own expense;
for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in
Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my elephantine
adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think my case more
ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader can accuse me here of trying
to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl
me from my throne. I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end
of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to
be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in
advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years
behind it. I did strain my voice with a painfully juvenile exaggeration
in uttering my truths. And I was punished in the fittest and funniest way,
for I have kept my truths: but I have discovered, not that they were not
truths, but simply that they were not mine. When I fancied that I stood
alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed up by all
Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original;

but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the
existing traditions of civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought
he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe.
I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last
touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.
It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account of this
happy fiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy to read how I
gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the
falsehood of some dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt
from my catechism--if I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be
some entertainment in reading how I found at last in an anarchist club
or a Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish
church. If any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the
field or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains
of youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain
conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But
there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the
book, and nothing 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. These essays are concerned only to
discuss the actual fact that the central Christian theology (sufficiently
summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root of energy and sound
ethics. They are not intended to discuss the very fascinating but quite
different question of what is the present seat of authority for the
proclamation of that creed. When the word "orthodoxy" is used here it
means the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself
Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of
those who held such a creed. I have been forced by mere space to
confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the
matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves
got it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly
autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual
nature of the authority, Mr. G.S.Street has only to throw me another
challenge, and I will write him another book.

II THE MANIAC
Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely
altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I
remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark
which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the
modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly
that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man
will get on; he believes in himself." And I remember that as I lifted my
head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was