g, but
which is the power behind half the poems of the world. The mood cannot
even adequately be suggested, except faintly by this statement that
tragedy is the highest expression of the infinite value of human
life. Never had I stood so close to pain; and never so far away from
pessimism. Ordinarily, I should not have spoken of these dark emotions
at all, for speech about them is too difficult; but I mention them now
for a specific and particular reason to the statement of which I will
proceed at once. I speak these feelings because out of the furnace of
them there came a curious realisation of a political or social truth. I
saw with a queer and indescribable kind of clearness what a jury really
is, and why we must never let it go.

The trend of our epoch up to this time has been consistently towards
specialism and professionalism. We tend to have trained soldiers because
they fight better, trained singers because they sing better, trained
dancers because they dance better, specially instructed laughers because
they laugh better, and so on and so on. The principle has been applied
to law and politics by innumerable modern writers. Many Fabians have
insisted that a greater part of our political work should be performed
by experts. Many legalists have declared that the untrained jury should
be altogether supplanted by the trained Judge.

.....

Now, if this world of ours were really what is called reasonable, I do
not know that there would be any fault to find with this. But the true
result of all experience and the true foundation of all religion is
this. That the four or five things that it is most practically essential
that a man should know, are all of them what people call paradoxes. That
is to say, that though we all find them in life to be mere plain truths,
yet we cannot easily state them in words without being guilty of seeming
verbal contradictions. One of them, for instance, is the unimpeachable
platitude that the man who finds most pleasure for himself is often the
man who least hunts for it. Another is the paradox of courage; the fact
that the way to avoid death is not to have too much aversion to it.
Whoever is careless enough of his bones to climb some hopeful cliff
above the tide may save his bones by that carelessness. Whoever will
lose his life, the same shall save it; an entirely practical and prosaic
statement.

Now, one of these four or five paradoxes which should be taught to every
infant pratt