Heretics: Illustrated Centennial Edition (G. K. Chesterton Book 1)

by G.K. Chesterton

Civilization discovered Christian humility for the same urgent reason that it discovered faith and charity — that is, because Christian civilization had to discover it or die.

Now, the psychological discovery is merely this, that whereas it had been supposed that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found by extending our ego to infinity, the truth is that the fullest possible enjoyment is to be found by reducing our ego to zero.

It is one of the deadly fallacies of Jingo politics that a nation is stronger for despising other nations.

It is, apparently, deserting the path of religion and entering upon the path of secularism. Will it lose itself in quagmires of sensuality down this new path, and pant and toil through years of civic and industrial anarchy, only to learn it had lost the road, and must return to religion?

If you once establish the habit of trusting particular men to produce particular results in physics or astronomy, you leave the door open for the equally natural demand that you should trust particular men to do particular things in government and the coercing of men.