fixed. Whereupon
G.K.C. jumped up and carried on in his natural voice, "Science you
see is not infallible!" . . . Chesterton had the audience with him
from the start, and when it was over, everyone just sat there, not
wishing to leave. They were loath to let the light die!*

[* _Chesterton_ by Cyril Clemens, pp. 67-68.]

As in England, so also in the States, Gilbert's debating was held to
be far better than his straight lecturing. He never missed the
opportunity for a quick repartee and yet when he scored the audience
felt that he did so with utter kindness. At a debate with Dr. Horace
T. Bridges of the Ethical Cultural Society on "Is Psychology a
Curse?" Bishop Craig Stewart who presided, describes how:

In his closing remarks Chesterton devastatingly sideswiped his
opponent and wound up the occasion in a storm of laughter and
applause, "It is clear that I have won the debate, and we are all
prepared to acknowledge that psychology is a curse. Let us, however,
be magnanimous. Let us allow at least one person in this unhappy
world to practice this cursed psychology, and I should like to
nominate Dr. Bridges."

The Bishop on another occasion introduced Gilbert at a luncheon in
Chicago by quoting Oliver Herford's lines:

When plain folks such as you and I
See the sun sinking in the sky,
We think it is the setting sun:
But Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
Is not so easily misled;
He calmly stands upon his head,
And upside down obtains a new
And Chestertonian point of view.
Observing thus how from his nose
The sun creeps closer to his toes
He cries in wonder and delight
How fine the sunrise is tonight!

The fact that nearly all the headlines he chose sounded like
paradoxes, the fact that they did not themselves agree with him, had
on Chesterton's opponents and on some members of his audience one
curious effect. Dr. Bridges when asked his opinion of his late
sparring partner, after paying warm tribute to his brilliance as a
critic, his humour and his great personal charm, discovered in his
"subconscious" (Is Psychology a Curse?) "a certain intellectual
recklessness that made him indifferent to truth and reality . . .
fundamentally--perhaps I should say subconsciously--he was a
thorough-going skeptic and acted upon the principle that, since we
cannot really be positive about anything we had better believe what
it pleases us to believe."

So too at the Br