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, with the flag flying on the turret, and the more miserable it is the less we should leave it.  The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more.  All optimistic thoughts about England and all pessimistic thoughts about her are alike reasons for the English patriot.  Similarly, optimism and pessimism are alike arguments for the cosmic patriot.

Let us suppose we are confronted with a desperate thing—­say Pimlico.  If we think what is really best for Pimlico we shall find the thread of thought leads to the throne or the mystic and the arbitrary.  It is not enough for a man to disapprove of Pimlico:  in that case he will merely cut his throat or move to Chelsea.  Nor, certainly, is it enough for a man to approve of Pimlico:  for then it will remain Pimlico, which would be awful.  The only way out of it seems to be for somebody to love Pimlico:  to love it with a transcendental tie and without any earthly reason.  If there arose a man who loved Pimlico, then Pimlico would rise into ivory towers and golden pinnacles; Pimlico would attire herself as a woman does when she is loved.  For decoration is not given to hide horrible things:  but to decorate things already adorable.  A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it.  A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck.  If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is theirs, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence.  Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy.  I answer that this is the actual history of mankind.  This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great.  Go back to the darkest roots of civilization and you will find them knotted round some sacred stone or encircling some sacred well.  People first paid honour to a spot and afterwards gained glory for it.  Men did not love Rome because she was great.  She was great because they had loved her.