Unerringly conventional ...

... Philosophy for the All-Too-Common Man.

... it is an illuminating volume, since what we have on display in it is the bien-pensant mind at its most unguarded and self-revealing. In his own view, if not that of the reader, Grayling is leading humankind on the path of progress. Aware of the almost-impossible obstacles that had to be overcome in order to produce anyone as rational as himself, he does not suppose that progress is inevitable. Yet it seems a source of some puzzlement to him that others do not follow eagerly in his footsteps, and he is quick to accuse those who decline to join him on his pilgrimage of lacking in optimism. It does not occur to him that they might regard the narrow and frowsty world to which he aspires as scarcely worth living in.