Chesterton said of H. G. Wells—with whom he disagreed about almost everything but remained in cordial relations—that “he thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the mind.” Chesterton, however, was by contrast “incurably convinced that the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”*1 I like Chesterton’s gustatory metaphor: it suggests that when the mind is governed by properly settled convictions, only then can it be truly nourished.
