ding the Simple Life get up early in the
morning; because such altruism is much easier than stopping the games in
the amphitheatre or giving the English people back their land." The
present writer does not profess any ability to handle philosophic
problems philosophically; it seems to him, however, that if Chesterton
had been writing a few years later, he would have attempted to
extinguish the latest form of the Inner Light, that "intuition" which
has been so much associated with M. Bergson's teachings.

The Inner Light is finally polished off as follows:

Of all conceivable forms of enlightenment the
worst is what these people call the Inner Light.
Of all horrible religions the most horrible is the
worship of the god within. Any one who knows
anybody knows how it would work; anybody who knows
any one from the Higher Thought Centre knows how
it does work. That Jones should worship the god
within him turns out ultimately to mean that Jones
shall worship Jones. . . . Christianity came into
the world firstly in order to assert with
violence that a man has not only to look inwards,
but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment
and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine
captain.

Continuing his spiritual autobiography, Chesterton describes his gradual
emergence from the wonted agnosticism of sixteen through the mediumship
of agnostic literature. Once again that remark of Bacon's showed itself
to be true, "A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but
depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." A man may
read Huxley and Bradlaugh, who knew their minds, and call himself an
agnostic. But when it comes to reading their followers, there's another
story to tell. What especially struck Chesterton was the wholesale
self-contradictoriness of the literature of agnosticism. One man would
say that Christianity was so harmful that extermination was the least
that could be desired for it, and another would insist that it had
reached a harmless and doddering old age. A writer would assert that
Christianity was a religion of wrath and blood, and would point to the
Inquisition, and to the religious wars which have at one time or another
swept over the civilized world. But by the time the reader's blood was
up, he would come across some virile atheist's proclamation o