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Notes mortal has put on immortality.”
Here we begin to see the immense value of paradox in the matter of faith. Mr. Chesterton is an
optimist, not because he fits into this world, but because he does not fit into it. Pagan optimism is
content with the world, and subsists entirely in virtue of its power to fit into it and find it sufficient.
This is that optimism of which Browning speaks with scorn— “Tame in earth’s paddock as her
prize,” and which he repudiates in the famous lines, “Then, welcome each rebuff That turns
earth’s smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! Be our joys three parts
pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the
throe!”
Mr. Chesterton insists that beyond the things which surround us here on the earth there are other
things which claim us from beyond. The higher instincts which discover these are not tools to be
used for making the most of earthly treasures, but sacred relics to be guarded. He is an idealist
who has been out beyond the world. There he has found a whole universe of mysterious but
commanding facts, and has discovered that these and these alone can satisfy human nature.
The question must, however, arise, as to the validity of those spiritual claims. How can we be sure
that the ideals which claim us from beyond are realities, and not mere dream shapes? There is no
answer but this, that if we question the validity of our own convictions and the reality of our most
pressing needs, we have simply committed spiritual suicide, and arrived prematurely at the end
of all things. With the habit of questioning ultimate convictions Mr. Chesterton has little patience.
Modesty, he tells us, has settled in the wrong place. We believe in ourselves and we doubt the
truth that is in us. But we ourselves, the crude reality which we actually are, are altogether
unreliable; while the vision is always trustworthy. We are for ever changing the vision to suit the
world as we find it, whereas we ought to be changing the world to bring it into conformity with
the unchanging vision. The very essence of orthodoxy is a profound and reverent conviction of
ideals that cannot be changed—ideals which were the first, and shall be the last.
If Mr. Chesterton often strains his readers’ powers of attention by rapid and surprising movements
among very difficult themes, he certainly has charming ways of relieving the strain. The favourite
among all such methods is his reversion to the subject of fairy tales. In “The Dragon’s Grandmother”
he introduces us to the arch-sceptic who did not believe in them—that fresh-coloured and short-
sighted young man who had a curious green tie and a very long neck. It happened that this young
man had called on him just when he had flung aside in disgust a heap of the usual modern
problem-novels, and fallen back with vehement contentment on Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “When he
incidentally mentioned that he did not believe in fairy tales, I broke out beyond control. ‘Man,’ I
said, ‘who are you that you should not believe in fairy tales? It is much easier to believe in Blue
Beard than to believe in you. A blue beard is a misfortune; but there are green ties which are sins.
It is far easier to believe in a million fairy tales than to believe in one man who does not like fairy
tales. I would rather kiss Grimm instead of a Bible and swear to all his stories as if they were
thirty-nine articles than say seriously and out of my heart that there can be such a man as you; that
you are not some temptation of the devil or some delusion from the void.’” The reason for this
unexpected outbreak is a very deep one. “Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the
universe is wild and full of marvels. Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but
that the soul is sick and screaming. The problem of the fairy tale is—what will a healthy man do
with a fantastic world? The problem of the modern novel is—what will a madman do with a dull
world? In the fairy tale the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad. In the modern novels
the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of
the cosmos.”In other words, the ideals, the ultimate convictions, are the trustworthy things; the
actual experience of life is often matter not for distrust only but for scorn and contempt. And this
philosophy Mr. Chesterton learned in the nursery, from that “solemn and star-appointed priestess,”
his nurse. The fairy tale, and not the problem-novel, is the true presentment of human nature and
of life. For, in the first place it preserves in man the faculty most essential to human nature—the

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