xpressed in crowns
rayed like the sun and fans of peacock plumage. Yet at the same time it
could hold a thought about the abject smallness of man that could only
be expressed in fasting and fantastic submission, in the grey ashes of
St. Dominic and the white snows of St. Bernard. When one came to think
of _one's self_, there was vista and void enough for any amount of bleak
abnegation and bitter truth. There the realistic gentleman could let
himself go--as long as he let himself go at himself. There was an open
playground for the happy pessimist. Let him say anything against himself
short of blaspheming the original aim of his being; let him call himself
a fool and even a damned fool (though that is Calvinistic); but he must
not say that fools are not worth saving. He must not say that a man,
_qua_ man, can be valueless. Here again, in short, Christianity got over
the difficulty of combining furious opposites, by keeping them both, and
keeping them both furious. The Church was positive on both points. One
can hardly think too little of one's self. One can hardly think too much
of one's soul.

Take another case: the complicated question of charity, which some
highly uncharitable idealists seem to think quite easy. Charity is a
paradox, like modesty and courage. Stated baldly, charity certainly
means one of two things--pardoning unpardonable acts, or loving
unlovable people. But if we ask ourselves (as we did in the case of
pride) what a sensible pagan would feel about such a subject, we shall
probably be beginning at the bottom of it. A sensible pagan would say
that there were some people one could forgive, and some one couldn't: a
slave who stole wine could be laughed at; a slave who betrayed his
benefactor could be killed, and cursed even after he was killed. In so
far as the act was pardonable, the man was pardonable. That again is
rational, and even refreshing; but it is a dilution. It leaves no place
for a pure horror of injustice, such as that which is a great beauty in
the innocent. And it leaves no place for a mere tenderness for men as
men, such as is the whole fascination of the charitable. Christianity
came in here as before. It came in startlingly with a sword, and clove
one thing from another. It divided the crime from the criminal. The
criminal we must forgive unto seventy times seven. The crime we must not
forgive at all. It was not enough that slaves who stole wine inspired
partly anger and partly kindnes