with the earth from moment to moment, and that happier thinker
who considers rather our primary power of vision and of choice
of road.

But this is a deep mistake in this alternative of the optimist
and the pessimist. The assumption of it is that a man criticises
this world as if he were house-hunting, as if he were being shown
over a new suite of apartments. If a man came to this world from
some other world in full possession of his powers he might discuss
whether the advantage of midsummer woods made up for the disadvantage
of mad dogs, just as a man looking for lodgings might balance
the presence of a telephone against the absence of a sea view.
But no man is in that position. A man belongs to this world before
he begins to ask if it is nice to belong to it. He has fought for
the flag, and often won heroic victories for the flag long before he
has ever enlisted. To put shortly what seems the essential matter,
he has a loyalty long before he has any admiration.

In the last chapter it has been said that the primary feeling
that this world is strange and yet attractive is best expressed
in fairy tales. The reader may, if he likes, put down the next
stage to that bellicose and even jingo literature which commonly
comes next in the history of a boy. We all owe much sound morality
to the penny dreadfuls. Whatever the reason, it seemed and still
seems to me that our attitude towards life can be better expressed
in terms of a kind of military loyalty than in terms of criticism
and approval. My acceptance of the universe is not optimism,
it is more like patriotism. It is a matter of primary loyalty.
The world is not a lodging-house at Brighton, which we are to
leave because it is miserable. It is the fortress of our family,