{
  "id": "a_6x72bfjx",
  "oid": 164914,
  "revision": 1,
  "revision_oid": 164915,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
  "edition": "pg16769-r1",
  "title": "A diseased organ does not prove an exclusive cure by faith",
  "anchors": [
    {
      "unit": "CH02.P010",
      "oid": 28,
      "role": null,
      "edition": "pg16769-r1",
      "paragraph": "CH02.P010",
      "exact": "it is actually the organ of thought that has become diseased",
      "start": 966,
      "end": 1026,
      "prefix": "himself out of mental evil; for ",
      "suffix": ", ungovernable, and, as it were,",
      "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH02.P010#char=966,1026"
    }
  ],
  "body_markdown": "The physiological premise had a substantial contemporary counterpart. William James's *The Principles of Psychology* (1890), chapter I, describes brain injury, intoxicants and pathological changes as conditions that alter consciousness. He requires both spiritualist and associationist psychologists to acknowledge cerebral conditions of mental life. Thus recognizing a bodily disorder need not settle the dispute between religious and materialist accounts of mind. [James, *Principles*, I, pp. 3–5, York University electronic transcription](https://www.yorku.ca/pclassic/James/Principles/prin1.htm).\n\nBut James's passage does not establish Chesterton's next claim that salvation can come ‘only’ through will or faith, still less the later image of stopping thought altogether. It explains why psychological inquiry must include physiology; it offers no such exclusive therapeutic conclusion. Chesterton moves from a plausible objection to treating illness as an abstract debating error into an emphatic analogy between recovery and conversion. Separating those steps matters: the paragraph's appeal to ‘modern science’ is broader than the evidence furnished by this contemporary comparison. James is a witness to the period's conceptual setting, not an identified target or demonstrated source for Chesterton.",
  "sources": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.yorku.ca/pclassic/James/Principles/prin1.htm",
      "title": "William James, The Principles of Psychology (1890), chapter I: The Scope of Psychology",
      "locator": "Volume I, pp. 3–5; electronic transcription in Classics in the History of Psychology, Christopher D. Green, York University",
      "exact": null
    }
  ],
  "citations": [],
  "external_references": [
    {
      "url": "https://www.yorku.ca/pclassic/James/Principles/prin1.htm",
      "title": "James, *Principles*, I, pp. 3–5, York University electronic transcription"
    }
  ],
  "limits": [
    "This comparison verifies one relevant psychological premise, not the prevalence of any particular treatment in British asylums in 1908.",
    "No direct influence on Chesterton is asserted."
  ],
  "metadata": {
    "run": "chapter-02-restart-2026-11-07",
    "paragraph_investigator": "P010",
    "task": [
      {
        "approach": "Biblical references",
        "question": "Which Gospel sayings are combined in the intellectual-amputation parody, and what changes when Chesterton substitutes the head?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Assumed knowledge and unusual language",
        "question": "What were the Inner Circle and Gower Street, and why does this specific railway journey embody the argument?"
      },
      {
        "approach": "Philosophical contextualization: then and since",
        "question": "How much of the appeal to psychological science is supported by a contemporary psychologist's account of the diseased organ of thought?"
      }
    ],
    "model": "gpt-6.1-sol"
  },
  "content_sha256": "sha256:7287e9a586d7a3d0115369e30c41b250c0250a98194977c7bdea3e782431c613",
  "created_at": "2026-11-07T16:10:56Z",
  "is_current": true,
  "url": "/a/a_6x72bfjx",
  "revision_path": "/a/a_6x72bfjx/r/1",
  "cited_by": [
    {
      "id": "a_avnsjprz",
      "revision": 1,
      "title": "What a complete explanation can leave out",
      "url": "/a/a_avnsjprz"
    }
  ]
}