Orthodoxy

1.The chapter opens with a publisher praising a man for "believing in himself," and Chesterton's eye landing on a sign for Hanwell — a lunatic asylum. What is his point? Why does he say that the men who believe most completely in themselves are in madhouses?

1.Chesterton opens by describing modern virtues that have gone mad because they have been separated from each other — truth without pity, pity without truth, humility in the wrong place. What does he mean by "the old Christian virtues gone mad"? Can you think of contemporary examples of a virtue that has broken free of its companions and become destructive?

1.Chesterton begins by noting that as a boy he was told he would grow up and lose his ideals, replacing them with faith in practical politics. He says the opposite happened: his ideals remained, but his faith in practical politicians evaporated. Has something like this happened to you? What ideals have you kept, and what have you grown more skeptical about?

1.Chesterton rejects both optimism and pessimism as frameworks for relating to the world. He says the optimist says "My cosmos, right or wrong," while the pessimist has no loyalty to the world at all. What is wrong with each position? What is he proposing instead?

1.The chapter opens with the image of a mathematical creature from the moon who, having correctly deduced that the human body is symmetrical (two arms, two legs, two ears), wrongly deduces that there must be a heart on each side. Chesterton says Christianity is like knowing the heart is on the left — knowing where the world "goes wrong" in ways that pure logic cannot predict. What does this image tell us about the nature of Christian insight?

1.Chesterton opens with the claim that we cannot take our ideal of progress from nature, because nature makes no moral comment — there is no equality or inequality in nature, only in human systems of value. Why does this matter? What goes wrong when people try to derive their ethics from nature or evolution?

1.Chesterton opens with a critique of the intellectual laziness hidden behind modern jargon: long scientific-sounding phrases that allow people to talk without thinking. He says it is a good exercise to try to express any opinion in words of one syllable. Try this: take one belief you hold (religious or otherwise) and express it in the simplest possible terms. What do you discover?

1.Chesterton says he has found that Christian doctrine supplies all three requirements he identified for a genuine philosophy of life: a fixed ideal, a composite vision, and an awareness of the tendency toward decay and fall. Looking back over the book, which of these three has been most illuminating or surprising to you?

1.Which chapter or idea in Orthodoxy had the most impact on you, and why? Try to be specific: what exactly did Chesterton say, and what did it do to your thinking or your feeling?