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 logicians.  It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.  I give one coarse instance of what I mean.  Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing about it was that it was duplicate.  A man is two men, he on the right exactly resembling him on the left.  Having noted that there was an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right and one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes, twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain.  At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart on one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other.  And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong.