| › Preface - THIS book is meant to be a companion to "Heretics," and to put the positive side in addition to the negative. Many critics complained of the book call ...read |
| › 1: 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 ...read |
| › 2: 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 wi ...read |
| › 3: The Suicide of Thought - THE phrases of the street are not only forcible but subtle: for a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for a definition. Phrases like ...read |
| › 4: The Ethics of Elfland - WHEN the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these i ...read |
| › 5: The Flag of the World - WHEN I was a boy there were two curious men running about who were called the optimist and the pessimist. I constantly used the words myself, but I ch ...read |
| › 6: The Paradoxes of Christianity - THE real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest kind of trouble ...read |
| › 7: The Eternal Revolution - THE following propositions have been urged: First, that some faith in our life is required even to improve it; second, that some dissatisfaction with ...read |
| › 8: The Romance of Orthodoxy - IT is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; ...read |
| › 9: Authority and the Adventurer - THE last chapter has been concerned with the contention that orthodoxy is not only (as is often urged) the only safe guardian of morality or order, bu ...read |
