{ "id": "CH04.P021", "oid": 86, "kind": "paragraph", "label": null, "work": "orthodoxy", "edition": "pg16769-r1", "work_metadata": { "title": "Orthodoxy", "authors": [ "G. K. Chesterton" ], "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" ], "metadata_version": 2, "metadata_updated_at": "2026-11-07T20:29:57Z" }, "parent": "CH04", "ancestors": [ "CH04" ], "prev": "CH04.P020", "next": "CH04.P022", "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P021", "text": "For this reason (we may call it the fairy godmother philosophy) I never could join the young men of my time in feeling what they called the general sentiment of _revolt_. I should have resisted, let us hope, any rules that were evil, and with these and their definition I shall deal in another chapter. But I did not feel disposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious. Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn: I was willing to hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy. It could not well be wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold it at all. At this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning. I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion's) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind. The æsthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.", "length_cp": 2444, "sha256": "1b678fef46ac4877b4a3c22b98acb70a17bf88943dec347116676d33bd4f028b", "children": [], "annotations": [ { "id": "a_lljgpcux", "oid": 165126, "revision": 1, "revision_oid": 165127, "created_at": "2026-11-07T16:59:23Z", "updated_at": "2026-11-07T16:59:23Z", "title": "Endymion's moon and Jupiter's plural moons", "work": "orthodoxy", "edition": "pg16769-r1", "anchors": [ { "unit": "CH04.P021", "oid": 86, "role": null, "edition": "pg16769-r1", "paragraph": "CH04.P021", "exact": "To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon", "start": 875, "end": 929, "prefix": "d and unexpected as sex itself. ", "suffix": " and then to complain that Jupit", "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P021#char=875,929" } ], "metadata": { "run": "chapter-04-restart-2026-11-07", "paragraph_investigator": "P021", "task": [ { "approach": "Quotations and attributions", "question": "Can the sunset saying attributed to Wilde be located, and how does Wilde's identifiable discussion of sunsets differ from Chesterton's use?" }, { "approach": "Assumed knowledge and unusual language", "question": "What does the Endymion allusion contribute to the comparison between sexual wonder and sexual restriction?" } ], "model": "gpt-6.1-sol" }, "url": "/a/a_lljgpcux" }, { "id": "a_4rzcdos4", "oid": 165124, "revision": 1, "revision_oid": 165125, "created_at": "2026-11-07T16:59:23Z", "updated_at": "2026-11-07T16:59:23Z", "title": "Paying for sunsets: an unverified saying and a real disagreement", "work": "orthodoxy", "edition": "pg16769-r1", "anchors": [ { "unit": "CH04.P021", "oid": 86, "role": null, "edition": "pg16769-r1", "paragraph": "CH04.P021", "exact": "Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets.", "start": 2264, "end": 2347, "prefix": "rdinary joy in ordinary morals. ", "suffix": " But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we c", "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P021#char=2264,2347" } ], "metadata": { "run": "chapter-04-restart-2026-11-07", "paragraph_investigator": "P021", "task": [ { "approach": "Quotations and attributions", "question": "Can the sunset saying attributed to Wilde be located, and how does Wilde's identifiable discussion of sunsets differ from Chesterton's use?" }, { "approach": "Assumed knowledge and unusual language", "question": "What does the Endymion allusion contribute to the comparison between sexual wonder and sexual restriction?" } ], "model": "gpt-6.1-sol" }, "url": "/a/a_4rzcdos4" } ], "annotations_next_cursor": null, "cited_by": [ { "id": "a_5hvc6pyt", "oid": 165710, "revision": 1, "revision_oid": 165711, "created_at": "2026-11-07T19:11:19Z", "updated_at": "2026-11-07T19:11:19Z", "title": "A home large enough for discovery: the developing argument of Orthodoxy", "work": "orthodoxy", "edition": "pg16769-r1", "anchors": [ { "scope": "work", "role": null, "edition": "pg16769-r1", "oid": 2, "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1" } ], "metadata": { "run": "argument-articles-restart-2026-11-07", "pass": "argument", "task": "Developing argument of the whole of Orthodoxy", "object": "BOOK", "model": "gpt-6.1-sol" }, "url": "/a/a_5hvc6pyt" }, { "id": "a_ezv4y2k6", "oid": 165698, "revision": 1, "revision_oid": 165699, "created_at": "2026-11-07T19:04:35Z", "updated_at": "2026-11-07T19:04:35Z", "title": "A world that might not have been: wonder, gratitude, and the discipline of joy", "work": "orthodoxy", "edition": "pg16769-r1", "anchors": [ { "unit": "CH04", "oid": 7, "role": null, "edition": "pg16769-r1", "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04" } ], "metadata": { "run": "argument-articles-restart-2026-11-07", "pass": "argument", "task": "Developing argument of chapter IV, The Ethics of Elfland", "object": "CH04", "model": "gpt-6.1-sol" }, "url": "/a/a_ezv4y2k6" } ], "cited_by_next_cursor": null }