# Opposite faults need not be contradictory faults

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH06.P011](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH06.P011/#char=300,390): "A man might be too fat in one place and too thin in another; but he would be an odd shape."

The qualification ‘in one place’ matters. Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction excludes an attribute and its negation belonging to one subject simultaneously in the same respect (*Metaphysics* IV.3, 1005b19–20). It does not exclude opposed characteristics belonging to different parts. The inspected witness is W. D. Ross’s English translation in the Internet Classics Archive; Aristotle’s work dates from antiquity, not from this translation. Chesterton’s bodily example respects that distinction: incompatible descriptions become compatible when their application is specified. This is a philosophical comparison, not evidence that he borrowed the example from Aristotle. [Aristotle, IV.3](https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.4.iv.html)

Consequently, the paragraph withholds a tempting shortcut: Christianity’s critics have not yet been refuted merely because their complaints point in opposite directions. His provisional inference concerns the unusual object those complaints would describe. The same concession returns in the chapter’s miser-and-spendthrift example; only afterward does he test the alternative that the observers’ standards explain their disagreement. Later still, he accepts real differences within Christian practice, including fighting and non-resistance, rather than eliminating one description. This paragraph therefore keeps three questions distinct: can both charges be true, why do critics make them, and what explains the combination? Its odd body supplies a possible answer to the first, not a demonstration of Christianity’s truth. [Chesterton, chapter VI, from ‘It must be understood’ through ‘Here is another case’, and later passages beginning ‘I wished to be quite fair’, ‘And then in a quiet hour’, and ‘So it is also’](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769). *Orthodoxy* first appeared in 1908; the inspected Gutenberg witness reproduces a later reprint history ending in 1934, so it is not being presented as a first-edition collation.

## Sources

- [Aristotle, Metaphysics, translated by W. D. Ross (Internet Classics Archive)](https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.4.iv.html), Book IV, part 3; Bekker 1005b19–20; formulation of the principle of non-contradiction
- [G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (first published 1908), Project Gutenberg ebook 16769](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16769), Chapter VI, ‘The Paradoxes of Christianity’: paragraphs beginning ‘It must be understood’, ‘I wished to be quite fair’, ‘And then in a quiet hour’, and ‘So it is also’; opening publication-history leaf

Revision 1 · 2026-11-07 · https://glosses.org/a/a_e22sl2mn/