PREFACE This book is meant to be a companion to "Heretics," and toput the positive side in addition to the negative. Many criticscomplained of the book called "Heretics" because it merely criticisedcurrent philosophies without offering any alternative philosophy.This book is an attempt to answer the challenge. It is unavoidablyaffirmative and therefore unavoidably autobiographical. The writer hasbeen driven back upon somewhat the same difficulty as that which besetNewman in writing his Apologia; he has been forced to be egotisticalonly in order to be sincere. While everything else may be differentthe motive in both cases is the same. It is the purpose of the writerto attempt an explanation, not of whether the Christian Faith canbe believed, but of how he personally has come to believe it.The book is therefore arranged upon the positive principle of a riddleand its answer. It deals first with all the writer's own solitaryand sincere speculations and then with all the startling style inwhich they were all suddenly satisfied by the Christian Theology.The writer regards it as amounting to a convincing creed. But ifit is not that it is at least a repeated and surprising coincidence.
Gilbert K. Chesterton.