They are like the finest
operations of surgery; separating nerve from nerve but giving life.
It is easy enough to flatten out everything around for miles with
dynamite if our only object is to give death. But just as the
physiologist is dealing with living tissues so the theologian is
dealing with living ideas; and if he draws a line between them it is
naturally a very fine line.

If there appears a contradiction in the picture of Chesterton the
philosopher pondering on the Logos and Chesterton the child offering
trinkets to Our Lady, we may remember the Eternal Wisdom "playing in
the world, playing before God always" whose delight is to be with the
children of men.

CHAPTER XXXI

The Living Voice

CHESTERTON SPOKE ONCE of the keen joy for the intellect of
discovering the causes of things, but he was not greatly interested
in science. He would have said that although the physical sciences
did represent an advance in the grasp of truth it was, in the words
of Browning, only the "very superficial truth." He desired a
knowledge of causes that did not dwell simply on what was secondary
but led back to the First and Final Cause. To the mediaeval thinker,
science was fascinating as Philosophy's little sister: it was to
Philosophy what Nature was to man. Nature had been to St. Francis a
little lovely, dancing sister. Science had been to St. Thomas the
handmaid of philosophy. The modern world thought these proportions
fantastic. Huxley used Nature as a word for God. Physical Science had
ousted Philosophy.

An American friend lately told me of a girl who, asked if she
believed in God replied, "Sure, I believe in God, but I'm not nuts
about Him." Gilbert was not "nuts" about Science: therefore in a
world that saw nothing else to be "nuts" about he was called its
enemy. And as with other things taken more solemnly by most moderns
he preferred to get fun out of the inventions of the age.

He wrote in a fairly early number of _G.K.'s Weekly:_

ESKIMO SONG

. . . So that the audience in Chicago will have the advantage of
hearing Eskimos singing. (Or words to that effect.)

--_Wireless Programme_.

Oh who would not want such a wonderful thing
As the pleasure of hearing the Eskimos sing?
I wish I had Eskimos out on the lawn,
Or perched on the window to wake me at dawn:
With Eskimos singing in every tree
Oh that would be glory, be glory for me!

Oh list to the