by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which
turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool.
I am not here concerned to deny that he looked a fool. But if you
imagine that he felt a fool, or at any rate that the sense of folly
was his sole or his dominant emotion, then you have not studied
with sufficient delicacy the rich romantic nature of the hero
of this tale. His mistake was really a most enviable mistake;
and he knew it, if he was the man I take him for. What could
be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the
fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with all the humane
security of coming home again? What could be better than to have
all the fun of discovering South Africa without the disgusting
necessity of landing there? What could be more glorious than to
brace one's self up to discover New South Wales and then realize,
with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales.
This at least seems to me the main problem for philosophers, and is
in a manner the main problem of this book. How can we contrive
to be at once astonished at the world and yet at home in it?
How can this queer cosmic town, with its many-legged citizens,
with its monstrous and ancient lamps, how can this world give us
at once the fascination of a strange town and the comfort and honour
of being our own town?

To show that a faith or a philosophy is true from every
standpoint would be too big an undertaking even for a much bigger
book than this; it is necessary to follow one path of argument;
and this is the path that I here propose to follow. I wish to set
forth my faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need,
the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar
which Christendom has rightly named romance. For the very word