Orthodoxy | Page 6

written
"Hanwell." I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who
believe most in themselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who
believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know
where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to
the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in
themselves are all in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a
good many men after all who believed in themselves and who were not
in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted, "and you of all men
ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would not take
a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an
epic from whom you were hiding in a back room, he believed in
himself. If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly
individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is
one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in
themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say
that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete
self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a
weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and
superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who
has it has `Hanwell' written on his face as plain as it is written on that
omnibus." And to all this my friend the publisher made this very deep
and effective reply, "Well, if a man is not to believe in himself, in what
is he to believe?" After a long pause I replied, "I will go home and
write a book in answer to that question." This is the book that I have
written in answer to it.

But I think this book may well start where our argument started-- in the
neighbourhood of the mad-house. Modern masters of science are much
impressed with the need of beginning all inquiry with a fact. The
ancient masters of religion were quite equally impressed with that
necessity. They began with the fact of sin--a fact as practical as
potatoes. Whether or no man could be washed in miraculous waters,
there was no doubt at any rate that he wanted washing. But certain
religious leaders in London, not mere materialists, have begun in our
day not to deny the highly disputable water, but to deny the
indisputable dirt. Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is
the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some
followers of the Reverend R.J.Campbell, in their almost too fastidious
spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in
their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see
in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took
positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it
certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat,
then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He
must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must
deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The
new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny
the cat.
In this remarkable situation it is plainly not now possible (with any
hope of a universal appeal) to start, as our fathers did, with the fact of
sin. This very fact which was to them (and is to me) as plain as a
pikestaff, is the very fact that has been specially diluted or denied. But
though moderns deny the existence of sin, I do not think that they have
yet denied the existence of a lunatic asylum. We all agree still that there
is a collapse of the intellect as unmistakable as a falling house. Men
deny hell, but not, as yet, Hanwell. For the purpose of our primary
argument the one may very well stand where the other stood. I mean
that as all thoughts and theories were once judged by whether they
tended to make a man lose his soul, so for our present purpose all
modern thoughts and theories may be judged by whether they tend to
make a man lose his wits.

It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself
attractive. But a moment's thought will show that if disease is beautiful,
it is generally some one else's disease. A blind man may be picturesque;
but it requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even the
wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane. To the
insane man his insanity is quite prosaic, because