describe, much less defend, stepped quietly into their places like
colossal caryatides of the creed. The fancy that the cosmos was not vast
and void, but small and cosy, had a fulfilled significance now, for
anything that is a work of art must be small in the sight of the artist;
to God the stars might be only small and dear, like diamonds. And my
haunting instinct that somehow good was not merely a tool to be used,
but a relic to be guarded, like the goods from Crusoe's ship--even that
had been the wild whisper of something originally wise, for, according
to Christianity, we were indeed the survivors of a wreck, the crew of a
golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world.

But the important matter was this, that it entirely reversed the reason
for optimism. And the instant the reversal was made it felt like the
abrupt ease when a bone is put back in the socket. I had often called
myself an optimist, to avoid the too evident blasphemy of pessimism. But
all the optimism of the age had been false and disheartening for this
reason, that it had always been trying to prove that we fit in to the
world. The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do _not_ fit
in to the world. I had tried to be happy by telling myself that man is
an animal, like any other which sought its meat from God. But now I
really was happy, for I had learnt that man is a monstrosity. I had
been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse
and better than all things. The optimist's pleasure was prosaic, for it
dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the Christian pleasure was
poetic, for it dwelt on the unnaturalness of everything in the light of
the supernatural. The modern philosopher had told me again and again
that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in
acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the _wrong_ place, and my
soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and
illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now
why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a
giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.

CHAPTER VI.--_The Paradoxes of Christianity_

The real trouble with this world of ours is not that it is an
unreasonable world, nor even that it is a reasonable one. The commonest
kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite. Life is
not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicia