th. Many things which cannot be proved by reasoning may yet
be given in reason--involved in any reasonable view of things as a
whole. Thus faith includes reason--it _is_ reason on a larger scale--and
it is the only reasonable course for a man to take in a world of
mysterious experience. If the matter were stated in that way, Mr.
Chesterton would probably assent to it. Put crudely, the fashion of
pitting faith against reason and discarding reason in favour of faith,
is simply sawing off the branch on which you are sitting. The result is
that you must fall to the ground at the feet of the sceptic, who asks,
"How can you believe that which you have confessed there is no reason to
believe?" We have abundant reason for our belief, and that reason
includes those higher intuitions, that practical common sense, and that
view of things as a whole, which the argument of the mere logician
necessarily ignores.

With this reservation,[6] Mr. Chesterton's position in regard to faith
is absolutely unassailable. He is the most vital of our modern
idealists, and his peculiar way of thinking himself into his idealism
has given to the term a richer and more spacious meaning, which combines
excellently the Greek and the Hebrew elements. His great ideal is that
of manhood. Be a man, he cries aloud, not an artist, not a reasoner, not
any other kind or detail of humanity, but be a man. But then that means,
Be a creature whose life swings far out beyond this world and its
affairs--swings dangerously between heaven and hell. Eternity is in the
heart of every man. The fashionable modern gospel of Pragmatism is
telling us to-day that we should not vex ourselves about the ultimate
truth of theories, but inquire only as to their value for life here and
now, and the practical needs which they serve. But the most practical of
all man's needs is his need of some contact with a higher world than
that of sense. "To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that
he is a man." In the scale of differences between important and
unimportant earthly things, it is the spiritual and not the material
that counts. "An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of
science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of
the other world, but from ignorance of this world." "The moment any
matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever
spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably
mysterious and i