I merely voice the opinion of the
intelligent minority (or majority) of Mr. Chesterton's readers when I say
that his championship of Christian dogma sticks in my throat. In my
opinion, at this time of day it is absolutely impossible for a young man
with a first-class intellectual apparatus to accept any form of dogma, and
I am therefore forced to the conclusion that Mr. Chesterton has not got a
first-class intellectual apparatus. (With an older man, whose central
ideas were definitely formed at an earlier epoch, the case might be
different.) I will go further and say that it is impossible, in one's
private thoughts, to think of the accepter of dogma as an intellectual
equal. Not all Mr. Chesterton's immense cleverness and charm will ever
erase from the minds of his best readers this impression--caused by his
mistimed religious dogmatism--that there is something seriously deficient
in the very basis of his mind. And what his cleverness and charm cannot do
his arrogance and his effrontery assuredly will not do. And yet I said
that this book gave me a wholesome shock. Far from deteriorating, Mr.
Chesterton is improving. In spite of the awful tediousness of his
mannerism of antithetical epigram, he does occasionally write finer
epigrams than ever.
Pages:
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137