difficult to express; yet as a conclusion of the whole matter I
will attempt to express it. All the real argument about religion turns
on the question of whether a man who was born upside down can tell when
he comes right way up. The primary paradox of Christianity is that the
ordinary condition of man is not his sane or sensible condition; that
the normal itself is an abnormality. That is the inmost philosophy of
the Fall. In Sir Oliver Lodge's interesting new Catechism, the first two
questions were: "What are you?" and "What, then, is the meaning of the
Fall of Man?" I remember amusing myself by writing my own answers to the
questions; but I soon found that they were very broken and agnostic
answers. To the question, "What are you?" I could only answer, "God
knows." And to the question, "What is meant by the Fall?" I could answer
with complete sincerity, "That whatever I am, I am not myself." This is
the prime paradox of our religion; something that we have never in any
full sense known, is not only better than ourselves, but even more
natural to us than ourselves. And there is really no test of this except
the merely experimental one with which these pages began, the test of
the padded cell and the open door. It is only since I have known
orthodoxy that I have known mental emancipation. But, in conclusion, it
has one special application to the ultimate idea of joy.

It is said that Paganism is a religion of joy and Christianity of
sorrow; it would be just as easy to prove that Paganism is pure sorrow
and Christianity pure joy. Such conflicts mean nothing and lead
nowhere. Everything human must have in it both joy and sorrow; the only
matter of interest is the manner in which the two things are balanced or
divided. And the really interesting thing is this, that the pagan was
(in the main) happier and happier as he approached the earth, but sadder
and sadder as he approached the heavens. The gaiety of the best
Paganism, as in the playfulness of Catullus or Theocritus, is, indeed,
an eternal gaiety never to be forgotten by a grateful humanity. But it
is all a gaiety about the facts of life, not about its origin. To the
pagan the small things are as sweet as the small brooks breaking out of
the mountain; but the broad things are as bitter as the sea. When the
pagan looks at the very core of the cosmos he is struck cold. Behind the
gods, who are merely despotic, sit the fates, who are deadly. Nay, the
fates are worse than