A universe can be compared with its contents
There is nothing to compare it with. It would be just as sensible to call it small.
The argument turns on a distinction between measurable size and the emotional prestige of being large. A useful earlier comparison is Locke's account of relative terms: in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.xxvi.5, he calls great and little 'truly relations'. His example is a horse judged large by a Welshman and small by a Fleming because their familiar breeds supply different standards. This is a conceptual comparison, not evidence that Chesterton borrowed from Locke.
Locke's analysis also exposes a qualification to Chesterton's argument. A standard need not be another object of the same kind: we can compare the universe with a human body or with distances familiar on earth. The absence of a second universe therefore does not make cosmic size meaningless. Chesterton himself preserves such an internal comparison when he admits that the sun is larger than the earth. What his paired speeches more successfully challenge is the inference from that comparison to a compulsory emotion. The measurements do not by themselves require reverence for vastness rather than affection for a comprehensible home.
The witness consulted is Project Gutenberg's electronic Volume I of Locke's Essay, whose title page reproduces the first edition's 1690 date but whose text includes later revision notices; it should not be cited as a verified transcription of the unaltered first edition.
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