behind this phrase, as there is behind all popular phrases.
I did really have, in that short and shrieking period,
a rapid succession of a number of fundamental points of view.
I had, so to speak, about five religions in almost as many seconds.
My first religion was pure Paganism, which among sincere men
is more shortly described as extreme fear. Then there succeeded
a state of mind which is quite real, but for which no proper
name has ever been found. The ancients called it Stoicism,
and I think it must be what some German lunatics mean
(if they mean anything) when they talk about Pessimism.
It was an empty and open acceptance of the thing that happens--
as if one had got beyond the value of it. And then, curiously enough,
came a very strong contrary feeling--that things mattered very
much indeed, and yet that they were something more than tragic.
It was a feeling, not that life was unimportant, but that
life was much too important ever to be anything but life.
I hope that this was Christianity. At any rate, it occurred
at the moment when we went crash into the omnibus.

It seemed to me that the hansom cab simply turned over on top of me,
like an enormous hood or hat. I then found myself crawling
out from underneath it in attitudes so undignified that they
must have added enormously to that great cause to which the
Anti-Puritan League and I have recently dedicated ourselves.
I mean the cause of the pleasures of the people. As to my demeanour
when I emerged, I have two confessions to make, and they are both
made merely in the interests of mental science. The first is that
whereas I had been in a quite pious frame of mind the moment before
the collision, when I got to my feet and found I had got off with a
cut or two I began (like St. Peter) to curse and to swear.