he
needed logic, as part of the abundance of the mind's life, as part of
a much larger whole. What was the word--we are looking for it
still--for a use of the mind that included all these things; logic
and imagination, mysticism and ecstasy and poetry and joy; a use of
the mind that could embrace the universe and reach upwards to God
without losing its balance. The mind must work in time, yet it can
reach out into Eternity: it is conditioned by space but it can
glimpse infinity. The modern world had imprisoned the mind. Far more
than the body it needed great open spaces. And Chesterton, breaking
violently out of prison, looked around and saw how the Church had
given health to the mind by giving it space to move in and great
ideas to move among. Chesterton, the poet, saw too that man is a poet
and must therefore, "get his head into the heavens." He needs
mysticism and among Her great ideas, the Church gives him mysteries.

CHAPTER XIV

Bernard Shaw

_This chapter was read by G.B.S. His remarks are printed in
footnotes. [A facsimile of the] one page altered substantially by him
is [omitted in this plain-text electronic edition]_.

WHEN ANYONE IN the early years of the century made a list of the
English writers most in the public eye, such a list always included
the names of Bernard Shaw and G. K. Chesterton. But a good many
people in writing down these names did so with unconcealed irritation
and I think it is important at this stage to see why.

These men were constantly arguing with each other; but the literary
public felt all the same that they represented something in common,
and the literary public was by no means sure that it liked that
something. It could not quite resist Bernard Shaw's plays; it loved
Chesterton whenever it could rebuke him affectionately for paradox
and levity. What that public succumbed to in these men was their art:
it was by no means so certain that it liked their meaning. And so the
literary public elected to say that Shaw and Chesterton were having a
cheap success by standing on their heads and declaring that black was
white. The audience watched a Shaw v. Chesterton debate as a sham
fight or a display of fireworks, as indeed it always partly was; for
each of them would have died rather than really hurt the other. But
Shaw and Chesterton were operating on their minds all the time. They
were allowed to sit in the stalls and applaud. But they were
themselves being challenged; and