{
  "id": "CH03.P012",
  "oid": 50,
  "kind": "paragraph",
  "label": null,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
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  "work_metadata": {
    "title": "Orthodoxy",
    "authors": [
      "G. K. Chesterton"
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    "description": "G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy (1908), his account of how he came to Christian belief: the full text with annotations, cited sources and commentary.",
    "original_publication_year": 1908,
    "alternate_titles": [],
    "subjects": [
      "Christian apologetics",
      "Christianity",
      "Philosophy of religion",
      "Paradox",
      "G. K. Chesterton",
      "English literature, 20th century"
    ],
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    "metadata_updated_at": "2026-11-07T20:29:57Z"
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  "prev": "CH03.P011",
  "next": "CH03.P013",
  "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH03.P012",
  "text": "Then there is the opposite attack on thought: that urged by Mr. H.G. Wells when he insists that every separate thing is \"unique,\" and there are no categories at all. This also is merely destructive. Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected. It need hardly be said that this scepticism forbidding thought necessarily forbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without contradicting it. Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere), \"All chairs are quite different,\" he utters not merely a misstatement, but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different, you could not call them \"all chairs.\"",
  "length_cp": 639,
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      "created_at": "2026-11-07T16:33:54Z",
      "updated_at": "2026-11-07T16:33:54Z",
      "title": "Wells's chairs: useful classifications without absolute kinds",
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          "exact": "All chairs are quite different",
          "start": 466,
          "end": 496,
          "prefix": "ls says (as he did somewhere), \"",
          "suffix": ",\" he utters not merely a missta",
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            "approach": "Quotations and attributions",
            "question": "Where does Wells discuss chairs, and is Chesterton's sentence a verbatim quotation?"
          },
          {
            "approach": "Philosophical contextualization: then and since",
            "question": "Does Wells reject classification altogether, or distinguish practical classification from absolute knowledge?"
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      "title": "What thought and choice need: from scattered virtues to a seamless character",
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