He begins, like Margaret Fuller, with the fundamental principle of accepting the universe.  The thing we know best and most directly is human nature in all its breadth.  It is indeed the one thing immediately known and knowable.  Like R.L.  Stevenson, he perceives how tragically and comically astonishing a phenomenon is man.  “What a monstrous spectre is this man,” says Stevenson, “the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a thing to set children screaming;—­and yet looked at nearlier, known as his fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes!” In like manner Mr. Chesterton discovers man—­that appalling mass of paradox and contradiction—­and it is the supreme discovery in any spiritual search.

Having discovered the fundamental fact of human nature, he at once gives in his allegiance to it.  “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.”

There is a splendid courage and heartiness in his complete acceptance of life and the universe.  In a time when clever people are so busy criticising life that they are in danger of forgetting that they have to live it, so busy selecting such parts of it as suit their taste that they ignore the fact that the other parts are there, he ignores nothing and wisely accepts instead of criticising.  Mr. Bernard Shaw, as we have seen, will consent to tolerate the universe minus the three loyalties to the family, the nation, and God.  Mr. Chesterton has no respect whatever for any such mutilated scheme of human life.  His view of the institution of the family is full of wholesome common sense.  He perceives the immense difficulties that beset all family life, and he accepts them with immediate and unflinching loyalty, as essential parts of our human task.  His views on patriotism belong to the region of politics and do not concern us here.  In regard to religion, he finds the modern school amalgamating everything in characterless masses of generalities.  They deny the reality of sin, and in matters of faith generally they have put every question out of focus until the whole picture is blurred and vague.  He attacks this way of dealing with religion in one of his most amusing essays, “The Orthodox Barber.”  The barber has been sarcastic about the new shaving—­presumably in reference to M. Gillett’s excellent invention. “’It seems you can shave yourself with anything—­with