This will be our second meeting reading Orthodoxy, so read the next two chapters:

• Chapter Three – The Suicide of Thought
• Chapter Four – The Ethics of Elfland

For those of you that want an eBook, here is a link to Orthodoxy on the Project Gutenberg website.

Chapters Two and Three (The Maniac and The Suicide of Thought) are in many ways preliminary, introductory chapters. Under these  two  heads he is summarizing the philosophies of his day – he has tried them and they have been found wanting. It is only when we reach chapter four that he starts to show us the philosophy that he himself constructed, that he eventually recognized as not something new, not something that was his. His solitary and sincere speculations were answered and satisfied with Christian Theology. But he unfolds that process to us slowly, through the rest of the book. The Ethics of Elfland is really the beginning of that journey.

The Ethics of Elfland is many people’s favorite chapter of Orthodoxy. It is full of charming and quotable passages and aphorisms. So many, in fact, it is easy to lose the thread of his argument in the brilliance of his prose.