Orthodoxy

by G.K. Chesterton

The main defence of these thinkers is that they are not thinkers; they are makers. They say that choice is itself the divine thing.

He says that a man does not act for his happiness, but from his will.

He does not say, "Jam will make me happy," but "I want jam."

H.G.Wells has half spoken in its language; saying that one should test acts not like a thinker, but like an artist, saying, "I FEEL this curve is right," or "that line SHALL go thus."

complete free thought involves the doubting of thought itself, so the acceptation of mere "willing" really paralyzes the will.

The real difference between the test of happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of happiness is a test and the other isn't.

You can discuss whether a man's act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will. Of course it was.

By this praise of will you cannot really choose one course as better than another.

And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the will you are praising.

The worship of will is the negat...

If Mr. Bernard Shaw comes up to me and says, "Will something," that is tantamount to saying, "I do not mind what you will," and that is tantamount t...

That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act.

Mr. John Davidson tells us to have nothing to do with "Thou shalt not"; but it is surely obvious that "Thou shalt not" is only one of the necessary corollaries of "I will."

You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes.

They desired the freedoms of democracy, but also all the vetoes of democracy.

They wished to have votes and NOT to have titles.

weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal.

(what was more important) the system he would NOT rebel against, the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty;

therefore he can never be really a revolutionist.

the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it.

he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it.

As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, tha...

A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the ...

denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates fo...

He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because t...

In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men.

Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

the same blank and bankruptcy can be observed in all fierce and terrible types of literat...

When little boys in the street laugh at the fatness of some distinguished journalist, they are unconsciously assuming a standard of Greek sculpture. They are appealing to the marble Apollo.

Nietzsche had some natural talent for sarcasm: he could sneer, though he could not laugh; but there is always something bodiless and without weight in his satire, simply because it has not any mass of common morality behind it. He is himself more preposterous than anything he denounces.

this failure of abstract violence.

He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana.

The Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil.

But the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special.

pile of ingenuity, a pile of futility.

inevitable smash of the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Shaw, as clearly as an inevitable railway smash could be seen from a balloon.

He who thinks he is made of glass, thinks to the destruction of thought; for glass cannot think. So he who wills to reject nothing, wills the destruction of will; for will is not only the choice of something, but the rejection of almost everything.

It discredits supernatural stories that have some foundation, simply by telling natural stories that have no foundation.

Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them.

all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back.

Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret.

his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time.

his cry to arms.

she did not praise fighting, but fought. We KNOW that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow.

Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical per...

As if there were any inconsistency between having a love for humanity and having a hatred for inhumanity!

Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.

The love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred of a tyrant. The hatred of a hero is more generous tha...

They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by His insane magnificence and His insane meekness.

and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is."