Another Chesterton Quote on Doctrine

Man may be defined as an animal that makes dogmas.   As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense of which the expression is capable, becoming more and more human.  When he drops one doctrine after another in a refined skepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating them all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backward into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass.  Trees have no dogmas.  Turnips are singularly broad-minded.

(from Heretics by G.K. Chesterton, p. 288-289) -