s we used to know and care
about--the self-contradictory things if you like, but the
realities--the things which make men kill their enemies, go gladly to
the stake, or shut themselves in a hermitage?

All these are things which, Mr. Chesterton thinks, the intellectual is
willing to throw overboard at the bidding of intellect. But he would
rather throw over intellectualism. He prefers to abide by the "test of
the imagination," the "test of fairyland." "The only words that ever
satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy
books, 'charm,' 'spell,' 'enchantment.' They express the
arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because
it is a _magic_ tree. Water runs down-hill because it is bewitched."
The so-called "laws of nature" are not one whit less mysterious
because of their uniformity. And again: "It is supposed that if a
thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of
clock-work." Mr. Chesterton supposes exactly the opposite. "Because
children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce
and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They
always say, 'Do it again;' and the grown-up person does it again until
he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult
in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It
is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun, and
every evening, 'Do it again' to the moon.... Repetition may go on for
millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop."

Is not this, someone will say, only the _Religio Medici_ over again? Is
it not more than two and a half centuries since Sir Thomas Browne said:
"That there was a deluge once seems not to me so great a miracle as
that there is not one always;" and "where I cannot satisfy my reason, I
love to humour my fancy;" and "I can answer all the objections of Satan
and every rebellious reason, with that odd resolution I learned of
Tertullian, _Certum est quia impossibile est?_" Yes, it has all been
expressed in the _Religio_; but it is no small matter that, in spite of
Spencer, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, and Mr. Sidney Webb, there should still
be a modern and a popular way of using the thoughts of Sir Thomas
Browne. Mr. Chesterton has been driven into this apparent reaction by
the scientific thinkers to whom he was introduced with the scantiest
preparation. "It was Huxley and Herbert Spencer and Bradlaugh