est, but also
the lowest. "The Church was positive on both points. One can hardly
think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much of one's
soul."

At this point agreement with Mr. Chesterton becomes difficult.
Christianity, he tells us, comes in with a flaming sword and performs
neat acts of bisection. It separates the sinner from the sin, and tells
us to love the former and hate the latter. He also tells us that no
pagan would have thought of this. Leaving aside the question whether or
not Plato was a Christian, it may be pointed out that whereas Chesterton
condemns Tolstoyanism whenever he recognizes it, he here proclaims
Tolstoy's doctrine. On the whole, however, the mild perverseness of the
chapter on _The Paradoxes of Christianity_ leaves its major implications
safe. It does not matter greatly whether we prefer to regard
Christianity as a centre of gravity, or a point of balance. We need only
pause to note Chesterton personifies this dualism. _The Napoleon of
Notting Hill_ is the arrangement of little bits of iron--the inhabitants
of London, in this case--around the two poles of a fantastic magnet, of
which one is Adam Wayne, the fanatic, and the other, Auberon Quin, the
humorist. In _The Ball and the Cross_ the diagram is repeated. James
Turnbull, the atheist, and Evan MacIan, the believer, are the two poles.
We speak in a loose sort of way of opposite poles when we wish to
express separation. But, in point of fact, they symbolize connection far
more exactly. They are absolutely interdependent. The whole essence of a
North and a South Pole is that we, knowing where one is, should be able
to say where the other is. Nobody has ever suggested a universe in which
the North Pole wandered about at large. This is the idea which
Chesterton seems to have captured and introduced into his definition of
Christianity.

Democracy, to Chesterton, is the theory that one man is as good as
another; Christianity, he finds, is the virtual sanctification by
supernatural authority of democracy. He points out the incompatibility
of political democracy, for example, with the determinism to which Mr.
Blatchford's logical atheism has brought him. If man is the creature of
his heredity and his environment, as Mr. Blatchford asserts, and if a
slum-bred heredity and a slum environment do not make for high
intelligence, then obviously it is against the best interests of the
State to allow the slum inhabitant to vote. On the oth