ink that different principles hold in
each and that the dignity of spirit is inconsistent with the
explanation of it by physical analogy, and the meanness of matter
unworthy of being an illustration of moral truths. Love must not be
classed under physical cravings, nor faith under hypnotization.
When, therefore, an original mind overleaps these boundaries, and
recasts its categories, mixing up our old classifications, we feel that
the values of things are also confused. But these depended upon a
deeper relation, upon their response to human needs and
aspirations. All that can be changed by the exercise of intelligence
is our sense of the unity and homogeneity of the world. We may
come to hold an object of thought in less isolated respect, and
another in less hasty derision; but the pleasures we derive from all,
or our total happiness and wonder, will hardly be diminished. For
this reason the malicious or destructive character of intelligence
must not be regarded as fundamental. Wit belittles one thing and
dignifies another; and its comparisons are as often flattering as
ironical.

The same process of mind that we observed in wit gives rise to
those effects we call charming, brilliant, or inspired. When
Shakespeare says,

Come and kiss me, _sweet and twenty,_
Youth's a stuff will not endure,

the fancy of the phrase consists in a happy substitution, a merry
way of saying something both true and tender. And where could
we find a more exquisite charm? So, to take a weightier example,
when St. Augustine is made to say that pagan virtues were
_splendid vices,_ we have -- at least if we catch the full meaning --
a pungent assimilation of contrary things, by force of a powerful
principle; a triumph of theory, the boldness of which can only be
matched by its consistency. In fact, a phrase could not be more
brilliant, or better condense one theology and two civilizations.
The Latin mind is particularly capable of this sort of excellence.
Tacitus alone could furnish a hundred examples. It goes with the
power of satirical and bitter eloquence, a sort of scornful rudeness
of intelligence, that makes for the core of a passion or of a
character, and affixes to it a more or less scandalous label. For in
our analytical zeal it is often possible to condense and abstract too
much. Reality is more fluid and elusive than reason, and has, as it
were, more dimensions than are known even to the latest geometry.
Hence the under