mination, that the inaudible remarks which the old gentleman had
read from the manuscript were concerned with economic arguments for
Free Trade; and very excellent arguments too, for all I know. But the
contrast between what that orator was to the people who heard him,
and what he was to the thousands of newspaper-readers who did not
hear him, was so huge a hiatus and disproportion that I do not think
I ever quite got over it. I knew henceforward what was meant, or what
might be meant, by a Scene in the House, or a Challenge from the
Platform, or any of those sensational events which take place in the
newspapers and nowhere else.*

[* Pp. 201-2.]

As in _Orthodoxy_ Chesterton had formulated his religious beliefs, so
in _What's Wrong with the World_ he laid the foundations of his
sociology. It will be remembered that, giving evidence before the
Commission on the Censorship, Chesterton declared himself to be
concerned only with the good and happiness of the English people.
Where he differed from nearly every other social reformer was that he
believed that they should themselves decide what was for their own
good and happiness.

"The body of ideas," says Monsignor Knox of Gilbert's sociology,
"which he labelled, rather carelessly, 'distributism' is a body of
ideas which still lasts, and I think will last, but it is not exactly
a doctrine, or a philosophy; it is simply Chesterton's reaction to
life."*

[* _The Listener_, June 19, 1941.]

It may be said that a man's philosophy is in the main a formulation
of his reaction to life. Anyhow life seems to be the operative
word--for it is the word that best conveys the richness of this first
book of Chesterton's sociology. All the wealth of life's joys, life's
experiences, is poured into his view of man and man's destiny.
Already developing manhood to its fullest potential he found in this
book a new form of expression. To quote Monsignor Knox again, "I call
that man intellectually great who is an artist in thought . . . I
call that man intellectually great who can work equally well in any
medium." The poet-philosopher worked surprisingly well in the medium
of sociology.

He had intended to call the book, "What's Wrong?" and it begins on
this note of interrogation. The chapter called "The Medical Mistake"
is a brilliant attack on the idea that we must begin social reform by
diagnosing the disease. "It is the whole definition and dignity of
man t