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Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith), 1874-1936

"Orthodoxy"

"
It is just as unscientific as it is unphilosophical to be surprised
that in an unsympathetic atmosphere certain extraordinary sympathies
do not arise. It is as if I said that I could not tell if there
was a fog because the air was not clear enough; or as if I insisted
on perfect sunlight in order to see a solar eclipse.
As a common-sense conclusion, such as those to which we come
about sex or about midnight (well knowing that many details must
in their own nature be concealed) I conclude that miracles do happen.
I am forced to it by a conspiracy of facts: the fact that the men who
encounter elves or angels are not the mystics and the morbid dreamers,
but fishermen, farmers, and all men at once coarse and cautious;
the fact that we all know men who testify to spiritualistic incidents
but are not spiritualists, the fact that science itself admits
such things more and more every day. Science will even admit
the Ascension if you call it Levitation, and will very likely admit
the Resurrection when it has thought of another word for it.
I suggest the Regalvanisation.


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