With this reservation,[6] Mr. Chesterton’s position in regard to faith is absolutely unassailable.  He is the most vital of our modern idealists, and his peculiar way of thinking himself into his idealism has given to the term a richer and more spacious meaning, which combines excellently the Greek and the Hebrew elements.  His great ideal is that of manhood.  Be a man, he cries aloud, not an artist, not a reasoner, not any other kind or detail of humanity, but be a man.  But then that means, Be a creature whose life swings far out beyond this world and its affairs—­swings dangerously between heaven and hell.  Eternity is in the heart of every man.  The fashionable modern gospel of Pragmatism is telling us to-day that we should not vex ourselves about the ultimate truth of theories, but inquire only as to their value for life here and now, and the practical needs which they serve.  But the most practical of all man’s needs is his need of some contact with a higher world than that of sense.  “To say that a man is an idealist is merely to say that he is a man.”  In the scale of differences between important and unimportant earthly things, it is the spiritual and not the material that counts.  “An ignorance of the other world is boasted by many men of science; but in this matter their defect arises, not from ignorance of the other world, but from ignorance of this world.”  “The moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science.  It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality.”

Here we begin to see the immense value of paradox in the matter of faith.  Mr. Chesterton is an optimist, not because he fits into this world, but because he does not fit into it.  Pagan optimism is content with the world, and subsists entirely in virtue of its power to fit into it and find it sufficient.  This is that optimism of which Browning speaks with scorn—­

     “Tame in earth’s paddock as her prize,”

and which he repudiates in the famous lines,

       “Then, welcome each rebuff
       That turns earth’s smoothness rough,
       Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! 
       Be our joys three parts pain! 
       Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
     Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!”

Mr. Chesterton insists that beyond the things which surround us here on the earth there are other things which claim us from beyond.  The higher instincts which discover these are not tools to be used for making the most of earthly treasures, but sacred relics to be guarded.  He is an idealist who has been out beyond the world.  There he has found a whole universe of mysterious but commanding facts, and has discovered that these and these alone can satisfy human nature.