# Wonder and restraint before Orthodoxy

Commentary on Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton.

On [CH04.P022](https://glosses.org/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P022/#char=914,1031): "before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness"

The pairing of delight with submission has an earlier public history in Chesterton’s essays. In ‘A Defence of Humility,’ collected in *The Defendant* (first published 1901; inspected here in the 1902 second edition transcribed by Project Gutenberg), humility enlarges experience rather than merely lowering someone’s estimate of himself. The essay’s final paragraph imagines ordinary grass, stones and flowers becoming forests, mountains and bonfires when the observer relinquishes his habitual scale. Its fairy-tale child becomes small in order to see more. Modesty is thus already an instrument of wonder, not simply a moral payment demanded after enjoyment. [‘A Defence of Humility,’ final paragraph](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12245).

The companion essay ‘A Defence of Rash Vows’ supplies the other half of the pairing. It argues that a binding commitment preserves the significance of an intense experience: a lover’s promise makes a moment consequential beyond the moment itself. Its concluding paragraphs attack attempts to enjoy devotion without accepting commitment and defend the self-discipline of a final choice. This is close to the nursery creed’s refusal to separate delight from limitation, but the difference matters. In the earlier essay, a person freely imposes the restriction on himself; here, the beneficiary accepts a condition attached to a gift whose origin he does not understand. *Orthodoxy* moves from the romance of making a promise to the romance of receiving existence on conditions. [‘A Defence of Rash Vows,’ paragraphs beginning ‘The revolt against vows’ and ‘As we have said,’ through the conclusion](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12245).

These earlier formulations support continuity in Chesterton’s published thinking. They do not independently establish the autobiographical claim that his nurse and nursery tales originally produced those convictions. Nor do these two polemical essays substantiate his sweeping claim here about the ‘whole modern world’: they show how consistently he organized his argument against the attitudes he selected as its representatives.

## Sources

- [G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant (1901), Project Gutenberg transcription of the 1902 second edition](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12245), ‘A Defence of Humility,’ especially final paragraph beginning ‘In a very entertaining work’; ‘A Defence of Rash Vows,’ paragraphs beginning ‘The revolt against vows,’ ‘As we have said,’ and ‘Emphatically it will not work’; title page and October 1901 prefatory note

Revision 1 · 2026-11-07 · https://glosses.org/a/a_erf3rlpq/