It is convenient to compare Shaw and Chesterton because they are antithetic in temperament and opinion and represent two opposite currents of modern thought. Shaw stands for the earlier rationalistic, socialistic revolt against the conventions of society. Chesterton stands for the later conservative reaction to all this, for ecclesiasticism, nationalism, and traditionalism. Shaw is a vegetarian and teetotaler. Chesterton is quite the opposite; he champions the public house as a good old English institution. Shaw is a suffragist; Chesterton is dead set against anything of the kind. Shaw came from the most pronounced Protestant stock, the Ulster kind, and, as we can see from his introduction to "Androcles and the Lion", he has constructed a sort of religion for himself, though he could hardly be accounted orthodox. Chesterton is a Catholic, though of the Anglican rather than the Roman variety, a champion of orthodoxy, and a defender of all forms of ritualism and medievalism. Chesterton makes it his business to find a logical basis for popular traditions, customs, and superstitions which have always been regarded as purely irrational and arbitrary even by those who liked them and defended them as poetic and conforming to a deeper reality than that of reason. Shaw is always showing how absurd and illogical are the soundest axioms and the most unquestioned platitudes, whether of orthodox conservative or orthodox revolutionary thought. Chesterton discovers new reasons in things; Shaw discovers new unreasons in things.
Chesterton appears in the capacity of permanent minority leader. But this is in respect to that really small minority of professional writers, speakers, and agitators who set the fashions for the Zeitgeist. Actually he has the backing of the great inarticulate immobile mass of the people.
Chesterton has discovered how to be witty though orthodox. But his orthodoxy is so extreme that it seems heterodoxy to most of us. Perhaps that accounts for his success in making it sound paradoxical. As Wesley determined that the devil had no right to all the pretty music, so Chesterton determined that the iconoclasts should not monopolize all the cleverness. His originality consists in his genius for turning platitudes into epigrams. He can put the most unquestioned axiom in a way to shock the world. If he is right in what he says in his books on Watts that "there is only one thing that requires real courage to say and that is a truism", Chesterton must be the bravest man alive. But even he finds it necessary to promulgate his truisms in the disguise of sensational novelties.
Chesterton's ideal is a complete democracy, not merely democracy in politics but democracy in science, religion, literature, sport, and art. If you say this is impracticable he doubtless would retort that it was the essence of an ideal to be impracticable, otherwise it would be confounded with dull reality. He always champions the opinion of the many against that of the few, the laymen against the expert.
Once men sang together round a table in chorus; now one man sings alone, for the absurd reason that he can sing better. If scientific civilization goes on (which is most improbable) only one man will laugh because he can laugh better than the rest.—"Heretics."
It was absurd to say that Waterloo was won on Eton cricket fields. But it might have fairly been said that Waterloo was won on the village green, where clumsy boys played a very clumsy cricket.
... It is a good sign in a nation when such things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is a bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them and that the nation is merely looking on.—"All Things Considered."
On this ground he hated Germany even before the war, as a nation ruled by experts. He denounced its workingmen's insurance, its governmental efficiency, its higher criticism, and the like. "I am all for German fantasy, but I will resist German earnestness till I die. I am all for Grimm's Fairy Tales; but if there is such a thing as Grimm's Law, I would break it if I knew what it was."[1]
It is on the basis of democracy that he defends religion:
That Christianity is identical with democracy is the hardest of gospels: there is nothing that so strikes men with fear as that they are all sons of God.—"Twelve Types."
It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated and ought to be treated more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in a village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad.... If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes—our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.... Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom: tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father.—"Orthodoxy."
I expect some time to find Chesterton defending the Trinity on the ground that it is more democratic than Mohammedan monotheism, a sort of commission government extended to the universe.
Chesterton has the true artist's love for the individual and the concrete. He delights in clear outlines and bright colors. He thinks in pictures. I have never seen any of his painting, but he must have the color sense strongly developed. He will halt in a stern chase or in the height of an argument to describe a sunset with the most chromatic language at his command. He studied art at the Slade School in London, and although he was soon switched off into journalism he still reverts to the pencil on occasion. He has supplied the illustrations to three of Belloc's books; "The Great Enquiry", "The Green Overcoat", and "Emmanuel Burden."[2] The last, a satire on imperialistic financiering, is one of the cleverest pieces of irony to be found in all literature, but it raises the question of whether the ironical tone can be sustained through a whole volume without a decline of interest. When the question of illustration arose Chesterton sent out for a bundle of wrapping paper, and in the course of one evening drew all of the portraits in the book as well as a lot that were not used.