Orthodoxy

by G.K. Chesterton

There is a skeptic far more terrible than he who believes that everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the skeptic who believes that everything began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him, his own friends are a mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother. This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought that men would get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after the super man who are always looking for him in the looking glass, those writers who talk about impressing their personalities instead of creating life for the world—all these people have really only an inch between them and this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all around the man has been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts and the foundations of the world fail; when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare—then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain. His mother’s face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, “He believes in himself.”