He cannot imagine that the book would last twenty minutes longer than the philosophies which it attacks. But the reason these essays still hold up so well, is because the bad ideas which they counter keep returning as do wide lapels and baggy pants. And most bad ideas, like bad fashions, attack the dignity of Man. Chesterton defends Man as the only creature that can be dignified - because Man is also the only creature that can be absurd. Man is an exception, whatever else he is. . .
Man is always something worse or something better than an animal.
For in sex, no animal can be chivalrous and no animal can be obscene. And no animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness or so good as drink . A man trying to get a fly out of his glass of milk or a piece of cork out of his glass of wine imagines himself irritated. But their problems, says Chesterton, merely rest on false assumptions, such as the assumption that drawers should always come out easily. We make fools of ourselves because we have wrong ideas.