that is, in the
case of men who have realised goodness in its true nature in {122}
their characters and lives. As St. Paul expressed it (Rom. xiii. 10),
"Love is the fulfilling of the law." Or again (Gal. v. 23), after
enumerating the 'fruits of the spirit'--love, joy, peace,
longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance--he
adds, "Against such there is no law."

In the domain of life, not less than in that of the arts, the highest
activity does not always or necessarily take the form of conformity to
rule. There are critical moments when rules fail, when, in fact,
obedience to rule would mean disobedience to that higher law, of which
rules and formulae are at best only an adumbration. The originality of
the great musician or painter consists in just such transcendence of
accepted formulae; this is why he invariably encounters opposition and
obloquy from the learned conventional pedants of his time. And in the
domain of morals the martyrs, reformers, prophets are in like manner
'willing sinners.' They are denounced, persecuted, crucified; for are
they not disturbers of society; do they not unsettle young men; do they
not come, as Christ came, not to bring peace into the world, but a
sword? And thus it is that the willing sinners of one generation are
the martyrs and heroes of the next. Through their life and death a
richer meaning has been given to the law of beauty or of rectitude,
only, alas! in its turn to be translated into new conventions, new
{123} formulae, which shall in due time require new martyrs to
transcend them. And thus, on the other hand, the perfectly honest
sticklers for the old and common-place, unwilling sinners all
unconscious of their sin, are fated to bear in history the brand of men
who have persecuted the righteous without cause. To each, according to
the strange sad law of life, time brings its revenges.

{124}

CHAPTER XIII

THE INCOMPLETE SOCRATICS

_A philosopher at ease--The sensual sty--Citizens of the world--The tub
of Diogenes--A philosophy of abstracts_

[204]

I. ARISTIPPUS AND THE CYRENAICS.--Aristippus was a native of Cyrene, a
Greek colony on the north coast of Africa. He is said to have come to
Athens because of his desire to hear Socrates; but from the notices of
him which we find in Xenophon's memoirs he appears to have been from
the first a somewhat intractable follower, dissenting especially from
the poverty and self-denial of th