re 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 kindness. We must be much more angry with theft than before,
and yet much kinder to thieves than before. There was room for wrath
and love to run wild. And the more I considered Christianity,
the more I found that while it had established a rule and order,
the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run
wild.

Mental and emotional liberty are not so simple as they