er hand, it is
entirely to the best interests of the State to entrust its affairs to
the aristocracy, whose breeding and environment gives it an enormous
amount of intelligence. Christianity, by proclaiming that every man's
body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, insists both upon the necessity of
abolishing the slums and of honouring the slum-dwellers as sharers with
the rest of humanity in a common sonship. This is the case for
Socialism, it may be pointed out parenthetically, and Chesterton has let
it slip past him. He insists that orthodoxy is the best conceivable
guardian of liberty, for the somewhat far-fetched reason that no
believer in miracles would have such "a deep and sincere faith in the
incurable routine of the cosmos" as to cling to the theory that men
should not have the liberty to work changes. If a man believed in the
freedom of God, in fact, he would have to believe in the freedom of man.
The obvious answer to which is that he generally doesn't. Christianity
made for eternal vigilance, Chesterton maintains, whereas Buddhism kept
its eye on the Inner Light--which means, in fact, kept it shut. In
proof, or at least in confirmation of this, he points to the statues of
Christian saints and of the Buddha. The former keep their eyes open
wide, the latter keep their eyes firmly closed. Vigilance, however, does
not always make for liberty--the vigilance of the Inquisition, for
example. Leaving out of account this and other monstrous exceptions, we
might say spiritual liberty, perhaps, but not political liberty, not, at
any rate, since the days of Macchiavelli, and the divorce of Church and
State.

By insisting specially on the immanence of God we
get introspection, self-isolation, quietism,
social indifference--Tibet. By insisting specially
on the transcendence of God we get wonder,
curiosity, moral and political adventure,
religious indignation--Christendom. Insisting that
God is inside man, man is always inside himself.
By insisting that God transcends man, man has
transcended himself.

In concluding the book, Chesterton joyously refutes a few anti-Christian
arguments by means of his extraordinary knack of seeing the large and
obvious, and therefore generally overlooked things. He believes in
Christianity because he is a rationalist, and the evidence in its favour
has convinced him. The arguments with which he deals a