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  "id": "CH04.P029",
  "oid": 94,
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  "label": null,
  "work": "orthodoxy",
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  "work_metadata": {
    "title": "Orthodoxy",
    "authors": [
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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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  "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH04.P029",
  "text": "In fairyland there had been a real law; a law that could be broken, for the definition of a law is something that can be broken. But the machinery of this cosmic prison was something that could not be broken; for we ourselves were only a part of its machinery. We were either unable to do things or we were destined to do them. The idea of the mystical condition quite disappeared; one can neither have the firmness of keeping laws nor the fun of breaking them. The largeness of this universe had nothing of that freshness and airy outbreak which we have praised in the universe of the poet. This modern universe is literally an empire; that is, it is vast, but it is not free. One went into larger and larger windowless rooms, rooms big with Babylonian perspective; but one never found the smallest window or a whisper of outer air.",
  "length_cp": 833,
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      "updated_at": "2026-11-07T16:59:23Z",
      "title": "A breakable command and an unbreakable causal order",
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          "exact": "We were either unable to do things or we were destined to do them.",
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          "prefix": "e only a part of its machinery. ",
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            "approach": "Philosophical contextualization: then and since",
            "question": "Does causal determination abolish the distinction between obeying and breaking a moral law? How would Mill's account of necessity answer the cosmic-prison argument?"
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      "title": "A world that might not have been: wonder, gratitude, and the discipline of joy",
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        "task": "Developing argument of chapter IV, The Ethics of Elfland",
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