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  "id": "CH07.P007",
  "oid": 163,
  "kind": "paragraph",
  "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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    "metadata_updated_at": "2026-11-07T20:29:57Z"
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  "prev": "CH07.P006",
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  "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH07.P007",
  "text": "Then again, some people fall back on sheer submission and sitting still. Nature is going to do something some day; nobody knows what, and nobody knows when. We have no reason for acting, and no reason for not acting. If anything happens it is right: if anything is prevented it was wrong. Again, some people try to anticipate nature by doing something, by doing anything. Because we may possibly grow wings they cut off their legs. Yet nature may be trying to make them centipedes for all they know.",
  "length_cp": 499,
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      "title": "Why an inevitable future need not make action idle",
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          "exact": "We have no reason for acting, and no reason for not acting.",
          "start": 157,
          "end": 216,
          "prefix": "ws what, and nobody knows when. ",
          "suffix": " If anything happens it is right",
          "url": "/orthodoxy/pg16769-r1/CH07.P007#char=157,216"
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            "approach": "Philosophical contextualization: then and since",
            "question": "Does an inevitable natural outcome make action pointless, and how does that inference differ from approving whatever happens?"
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      "created_at": "2026-11-07T19:04:35Z",
      "updated_at": "2026-11-07T19:04:35Z",
      "title": "A fixed ideal and the permanent work of reform",
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