In this episode of Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton turns modern confidence upside down, suggesting that absolute belief in oneself may be less a virtue than a symptom. Reading from Orthodoxy, we explore the strange connection between sanity, doubt, and conviction—and why faith that can admit uncertainty may be more alive than certainty that cannot be questioned.
Transcript:
Welcome.
I’m glad you’re here.
This is Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton, using the Project Gutenberg edition—read slowly, aloud, and in company.
These readings aren’t lectures, and they aren’t explanations. They’re an invitation: to listen carefully, to follow an argument that wanders on purpose, and to allow surprise to do some of the work. So let’s take our time—and see where Chesterton leads us today.
Last time we experienced the paradox of Chesterton discovering what had already been discovered. Today we walk with him as he wonders about the strange relationship between sanity and self-assurance. Western culture prizes self-reliance, independence, and confidence, often treating doubt as weakness—or worse, as a flaw that needs fixing. We tend to reward those who sound most certain, especially in public life, even when that certainty turns out to be hollow once it meets the complexity of reality. And here is the paradox Chesterton presses on us: most of us actually live quite sanely in the middle, aware that life is complicated and truth is rarely simple, yet we find ourselves drawn to the loud confidence of extremes. With that tension in mind, let’s listen to Chesterton.
Reading 2 – lines 245 through 376 of Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy (1908). Project Gutenberg eBook no. 16769. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769
It may be that somebody will be entertained by the account of this happy fiasco. It might amuse a friend or an enemy to read how I gradually learnt from the truth of some stray legend or from the falsehood of some dominant philosophy, things that I might have learnt from my catechism--if I had ever learnt it. There may or may not be some entertainment in reading how I found at last in an anarchist club or a Babylonian temple what I might have found in the nearest parish church. If any one is entertained by learning how the flowers of the field or the phrases in an omnibus, the accidents of politics or the pains of youth came together in a certain order to produce a certain conviction of Christian orthodoxy, he may possibly read this book. But there is in everything a reasonable division of labour. I have written the book, and nothing on earth would induce me to read it.
I add one purely pedantic note which comes, as a note naturally should, at the beginning of the book. These essays are concerned only to discuss the actual fact that the central Christian theology (sufficiently summarized in the Apostles' Creed) is the best root of energy and sound ethics. They are not intended to discuss the very fascinating but quite different question of what is the present seat of authority for the proclamation of that creed. When the word "orthodoxy" is used here it means the Apostles' Creed, as understood by everybody calling himself Christian until a very short time ago and the general historic conduct of those who held such a creed. I have been forced by mere space to confine myself to what I have got from this creed; I do not touch the matter much disputed among modern Christians, of where we ourselves got it. This is not an ecclesiastical treatise but a sort of slovenly autobiography. But if any one wants my opinions about the actual nature of the authority, Mr. G.S. Street has only to throw me another challenge, and I will write him another book.
CHAPTER II.-- The Maniac
Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a few cynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of the modern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothing in it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in himself." And I remember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which was 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 it is quite true. A man who thinks himself a chicken is to himself as ordinary as a chicken. A man who thinks he is a bit of glass is to himself as dull as a bit of glass. It is the homogeneity of his mind which makes him dull, and which makes him mad. It is only because we see the irony of his idea that we think him even amusing; it is only because he does not see the irony of his idea that he is put in Hanwell at all. In short, oddities only strike ordinary people. Oddities do not strike odd people. This is why ordinary people have a much more exciting time; while odd people are always complaining of the dulness of life. This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever. The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central. Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous. You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons. The fairy tale discusses what a sane man will do in a mad world. The sober realistic novel of to-day discusses what an essential lunatic will do in a dull world.
One of my friends who began reading Orthodoxy stopped abruptly after this section. “How can you do anything in life unless you have conviction that you are right?” I sighed and tried to help him to understand that conviction is a degree not binary. I don’t think he picked Orthodoxy up again.
I find Chesterton’s assertion that absolute belief in oneself is an illness and not a strength, actually freeing. It grants me permission to be wrong and to fail. It also allows me the opportunity to encounter my fellow human as a person who is potentially correct and discoverable—not as a conquest to be known.
I wonder if the orthodox understanding, that we all miss the mark and fall short, is not the assertion that conviction must be cast as a grain of sand in the oyster of faith? Is it a way of living where a person walks with a faith that limps, one day on conviction, the next day on doubt? Is that paradox of the day: faith without doubt, self-belief without question—is dead?
Next time Chesterton, in session 3, lines 377 through 491 of Chesterton, G. K. Orthodoxy (1908). Project Gutenberg poses yet more questions about conviction and sanity. If imagination opens the mind to an infinite world while reason alone tries to trap infinity inside a system, which one truly keeps us sane? And when madness turns out not to be the loss of reason but the loss of everything except reason, should we fear poetry—or the cold, flawless logic that explains everything and understands nothing else?
See you again in two weeks!