The question must, however, arise, as to the validity of those spiritual claims.  How can we be sure that the ideals which claim us from beyond are realities, and not mere dream shapes?  There is no answer but this, that if we question the validity of our own convictions and the reality of our most pressing needs, we have simply committed spiritual suicide, and arrived prematurely at the end of all things.  With the habit of questioning ultimate convictions Mr. Chesterton has little patience.  Modesty, he tells us, has settled in the wrong place.  We believe in ourselves and we doubt the truth that is in us.  But we ourselves, the crude reality which we actually are, are altogether unreliable; while the vision is always trustworthy.  We are for ever changing the vision to suit the world as we find it, whereas we ought to be changing the world to bring it into conformity with the unchanging vision.  The very essence of orthodoxy is a profound and reverent conviction of ideals that cannot be changed—­ideals which were the first, and shall be the last.

If Mr. Chesterton often strains his readers’ powers of attention by rapid and surprising movements among very difficult themes, he certainly has charming ways of relieving the strain.  The favourite among all such methods is his reversion to the subject of fairy tales.  In “The Dragon’s Grandmother” he introduces us to the arch-sceptic who did not believe in them—­that fresh-coloured and short-sighted young man who had a curious green tie and a very long neck.  It happened that this young man had called on him just when he had flung aside in disgust a heap of the usual modern problem-novels, and fallen back with vehement contentment on Grimm’s Fairy Tales.  “When he incidentally mentioned that he did not believe in fairy tales, I broke out beyond control.  ‘Man,’ I said, ’who are you that you should not believe in fairy tales?  It is much easier to believe in Blue Beard than to believe in you.  A blue beard is a misfortune; but there are green ties which are sins.  It is far easier to believe in a million fairy tales than to believe in one man who does not like fairy tales.  I would rather kiss Grimm instead of a Bible and swear to all his stories as if they were thirty-nine articles than say seriously and out of my heart that there can be such a man as you; that you are not some temptation of the devil or some delusion from the void.’” The reason for this unexpected outbreak is a very deep one.  “Folk-lore means that the soul is sane, but that the universe is wild and full of marvels.  Realism means that the world is dull and full of routine, but that the soul is sick and screaming.  The problem of the fairy tale is—­what will a healthy man do with a fantastic world?  The problem of the modern novel is—­what will a madman do with a dull world?  In the fairy tale the cosmos goes mad; but the hero does not go mad.  In the modern novels the hero is mad before the book begins, and suffers from the harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos.”