G K Chesterton

Orthodoxy G K Chesterton

Thoroughly worldly people never understand even the world; they rely altogether on a fewcynical maxims which are not true. Once I remember walking with a prosperous publisher, who made a remark which I had often heard before; it is, indeed, almost a motto of themodern world. Yet I had heard it once too often, and I saw suddenly that there was nothingin it. The publisher said of somebody, "That man will get on; he believes in himself." And Iremember that as I lifted my head to listen, my eye caught an omnibus on which waswritten "Hanwell." I said to him, "Shall I tell you where the men are who believe most inthemselves? For I can tell you. I know of men who believe in themselves more colossallythan Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I canguide you to the thrones of the Super-men. The men who really believe in themselves areall in lunatic asylums." He said mildly that there were a good many men after all whobelieved in themselves and who were not in lunatic asylums. "Yes, there are," I retorted,"and you of all men ought to know them. That drunken poet from whom you would nottake a dreary tragedy, he believed in himself. That elderly minister with an epic from whomyou were hiding in a back room, he believed in himself. If you consulted your businessexperience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believingin himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe inthemselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man willcertainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin;complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical andsuperstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote: the man who has it has `Hanwell'written on his face as plain as it is written on that omnibus." And to all this my friend thepublisher made this very deep and effective reply, "Well, if a man is not to believe inhimself, in what is he to believe?" After a long pause I replied, "I will go home and write abook in answer to that question." This is the book that I have written in answer to it