AUTOBIOGRAPHY-Chesterton

4.—HOW TO BE A LUNATIC
I deal here with the darkest and most difficult part of my task; the period of
youth which is full of doubts and morbidities and temptations; and which,
though in my case mainly subjective, has left in my mind for ever a certitude
upon the objective solidity of Sin. And before I deal with it in any detail, it is
necessary to make a prefatory explanation upon one point. In the matter of
religion, I have been much concerned with controversies about rather
provocative problems; and have finally adopted a position which to many is
itself a provocation. I have grieved my well-wishers, and many of the wise and
prudent, by my reckless course in becoming a Christian, an orthodox
Christian, and finally a Catholic in the sense of a Roman Catholic. Now in
most of the matters of which they chiefly disapprove, I am not in the least
ashamed of myself. As an apologist I am the reverse of apologetic. So far as a
man may be proud of a religion rooted in humility, I am very proud of my
religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly
called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and
enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much
pertinacity), for I know very well that it is the heretical creeds that are dead,
and that it is only the reasonable dogma that lives long enough to be called
antiquated. I am very proud of what people call priestcraft; since even that
accidental term of abuse preserves the mediaeval truth that a priest, like every
other man, ought to be a craftsman. I am very proud of what people call
Mariolatry; because it introduced into religion in the darkest ages that element
of chivalry which is now being belatedly and badly understood in the form of
feminism. I am very proud of being orthodox about the mysteries of the
Trinity or the Mass; I am proud of believing in the Confessional; I am proud of
believing in the Papacy.
But I am not proud of believing in the Devil. To put it more correctly, I am
not proud of knowing the Devil. I made his acquaintance by my own fault; and
followed it up along lines which, had they been followed further, might have
led me to devil-worship or the devil knows what. On this doctrine, at least,
there is, mingling with my knowledge, no shadow of self-satisfaction any
more than of self-deception. On this one matter, a man may well be
intellectually right only through being morally wrong. I am not impressed by
the ethical airs and graces of sceptics on most of the other subjects. I am not
over-awed by a young gentleman saying that he cannot submit his intellect to
dogma; because I doubt whether he has even used his intellect enough to
define dogma. I am not impressed very seriously by those who call Confession
cowardly; for I gravely doubt whether they themselves would have the
courage to go through with it. But when they say, “Evil is only relative. Sin is