'For one awful instant we remember that we forgot'

 

Gilbert Keith Chesterton
May 29th, 1874 to June 14th, 1936

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We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. [...]. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forgot that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forgot.

 

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy