serious aspects of the work
of these years. While _What's Wrong with the World_ (discussed in
some detail in the next chapter) is the first sketch of his social
views--a kind of blueprint for a sane and human sort of world--the
other books with all their foolery hold a serious purpose. They
should be read as illustrations of the philosophy of _Orthodoxy_--
both the book he had written and the thing of which he had said "God
and humanity made it and it made me."

"This row of shapeless and ungainly monsters which I now set before
the reader," he says of his essays (in the "Introduction on
Gargoyles" in _Alarms and Discursions_), "does not consist of
separate idols cut out capriciously in lonely valleys or various
islands. These monsters are meant for the gargoyles of a definite
cathedral. I have to carve the gargoyles, because I can carve nothing
else; I leave to others the angels and the arches and the spires. But
I am very sure of the style of the architecture and of the
consecration of the church."

The story of _The Ball and the Cross_, already indicated to the
reader by the American-Italian duel which seemed like a parody of it,
has the double interest of its bearing on the world of Chesterton's
day and its glimpses at a stranger world to come. A young Highlander,
coming to London, sees in an atheist bookshop an insult to Our Lady.
He smashes the window and challenges the owner to a duel. Turnbull,
the atheist, is more than ready to fight; but the world, caring
nothing for religious opinions, regards anyone ready to fight for
them as a madman and is mainly concerned with keeping the peace.
Pursued by all the resources of modern civilisation, the two men
spend the rest of the book starting to fight, being interrupted and
arrested by the police, escaping, arguing and fighting again. They
end up in an asylum with a garden where again they talk endlessly and
where the power of Lucifer the prince of this world has enclosed
everyone who has been concerned in their wild flight, so that no
memory of it may live on the earth.

The two sides of Chesterton's brain are engaged in the duel of minds
in this book, and some of his best writing is in it, both in the
description of the wild rush across sea and land and in the
discussions between the two men. G.K.'s affection for the sincere
atheist is noteworthy and his hatred is reserved for the shuffler and
the compromiser. It was grand to have such a man as Turnbull to
conver