Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Clare Coney and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net ORTHODOXY _by_ G.K. CHESTERTON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LTD _First published in_.......................... 1908 _printed_..................................... 1908 _Reprinted_................................... 1909 _Reprinted_................................... 1911 _Reprinted_................................... 1915 _Reprinted_................................... 1919 _Reprinted_................................... 1921 _Reprinted_................................... 1924 _Reprinted_................................... 1926 _First published in "The Week-End Library" in_ 1927 _Reprinted_................................... 1934 MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. _TO MY MOTHER_ _CONTENTS_ _Chap._ _Page_ I. INTRODUCTION IN DEFENCE OF EVERYTHING ELSE 11 II. THE MANIAC ................................ 20 III. THE SUICIDE OF THOUGHT ................... 50 IV. THE ETHICS OF ELFLAND ..................... 76 V. THE FLAG OF THE WORLD ...................... 117 VI. THE PARADOXES OF CHRISTIANITY ............. 146 VII. THE ETERNAL REVOLUTION ................... 186 VIII. THE ROMANCE OF ORTHODOXY ................ 228 IX. AUTHORITY AND THE ADVENTURER .............. 259 _ORTHODOXY_ CHAPTER 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 some time ago I published a series of hasty but sincere papers, under the name of "Heretics," several critics for whose intellect I have a warm respect (I may mention specially Mr. G.S. Street) said that it was all very well for me to tell everybody to affirm his cosmic theory, but that I had carefully avoided supporting my precepts with example. "I will begin to worry about my philosophy," said Mr. Street, "when Mr. Chesterton has given us his." It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation. But after all, though Mr. Street has inspired and created this book, he need not read it. If he does read it, he will find that in its pages I have attempted in a vague and personal way, in a set of mental pictures rather than in a series of deductions, to state the philosophy in which I have come to believe. I will not call it my philosophy; for I did not make it. God and humanity made it; and it made me.