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Notes do so, most of us would probably strike a balance. We would find many of his views and statements
unconvincing; and yet we would acknowledge that they had the power of forcing the mind to see
fresh truth upon which the will must act decisively. The main point in his orthodoxy is
unquestionably a most valuable contribution to the general faith of his time and country. That
point is the adventure which he narrates under the similitude of the voyage that ended in the
discovery of England. He set out to find the empirical truth of human nature and the meaning of
human life, as these are to be explored in experience. When he found them, it was infinitely
surprising to him to become aware that the system in which his faith had come at last to rest was
just Christianity—the only system which could offer any adequate and indeed exact account of
human nature. The articles of its creed he recognised as the points of conviction which are absolutely
necessary to the understanding of human nature and to the living of human life.
Thus it comes to pass that in the midst of a time resounding with pagan voices old and new, he
stands for an unflinching idealism. It is the mark of pagans that they are children of Nature,
boasting that Nature is their mother: they are solemnised by that still and unresponsive maternity,
or driven into rebellion by discovering that the so-called mother is but a harsh stepmother after
all. Mr. Chesterton loves Nature, because Christianity has revealed to him that she is but his sister,
child of the same Father. “We can be proud of her beauty, since we have the same father; but she
has no authority over us; we have to admire, but not to imitate.”
It follows that two worlds are his, as is the case with all true idealists. The modern reversion to
paganism is founded on the fundamental error that Christianity is alien to Nature, setting up
against her freedom the repellent ideal of asceticism, and frowning upon her beauty with the
scowl of the harsh moralist. For Mr. Chesterton the bleakness is all on the side of the pagans, and
the beauty with the idealists. They do not look askance at the green earth at all. They gaze upon
it with steady eyes, until they are actually looking through it, and discovering the radiance of
heaven there, and the sublime brightness of the Eternal Life. The pagan virtues, such as justice and
temperance, are painfully reasonable and often sad. The Christian virtues are faith, hope, and
charity—each more unreasonable than the last, from the point of view of mere mundane common
sense; but they are gay as childhood, and hold the secret of perennial youth and unfading beauty,
in a world which upon any other terms than these is hastening to decay.
Self Assessment
1. Choose the correct options:
(i) Between 1900 and 1936 Chesterton published
(a) 200 books (b) 50 books (c) 10 books (d) 100 books
(ii) G.K. Chesterton was born in London on
(a) May 29 1874 (b) May 28 1874
(c) June 29 1874 (d) None of these
(iii) Chesterton was converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism in
(a) 1921 (b) 1922 (c) 1931 (d) 1911
(iv) Daily is written by
(a) Chesterton (b) Dryden
(c) Chaucer (d) Bacon

32.3 Summary

• G.K. Chesterton begins his essay in an engaging way — a personal anecdote of his coming to
the revelation that the white ceiling above his bed is a perfect, but unattainable canvas for
him to paint. Chesterton makes it clear through his musing on the uninspired artwork

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