with a wholly unexpected appeal
. . . an appeal (shall I say?) to sentiment rather than to strict
reason."

"I admit that."

"As I admit the appeal to be a strong one. . . . But before I try to
answer it, may I deal with a sentence or two which (pardon me) seemed
less relevant than the rest? . . . _If a house be divided against
itself, that house cannot stand_. True enough, my lord: but neither
can it aspire."

The Bishop lifted his eyebrows. But before he could interpose a word
Brother Copas had mounted a hobby and was riding it, whip and spur.

"My lord, when a Hellene built a temple he took two pillars, set them
upright in the ground, and laid a third block of stone a-top of them.
He might repeat this operation a few times or a many, according to
the size at which he wished to build. He might carve his pillars,
and flourish them off with acanthus capitals, and run friezes along
his architraves: but always in these three stones, the two uprights
and the beam, the trick of it resided. And his building lasted.
The pillars stood firm in solid ground, into which the weight of the
cross-beam pressed them yet more firmly. The whole structure was
there to endure, if not for ever, at least until some ass of a fellow
came along and kicked it down to spite an old religion, because he
had found a new one. . . . But this Gothic--this Cathedral, for
example, which it seems we must help to preserve--is fashioned only
to kick itself down."

"It aspires."

"Precisely, my lord; that is the mischief. When the Greek temple was
content to repose upon natural law--when the Greek builder said,
'I will build for my gods greatly yet lowlily, measuring my effort to
those powers of man which at their fullest I know to be moderate,
making my work harmonious with what little it is permitted to me to
know'--in jumps the rash Christian, saying with the men of Babel,
_Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto
heaven_; or, in other words, 'Let us soar above the law of earth and
take the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.' . . . With what result?"

"'Sed quid Typhoeus et validus Mimas
Contra sonantem Palladis aegida . . . ?'"

"The Gothic builders, like the Titans, might strain to pile Pelion on
Olympus. _Vis consili expers_, my lord. From the moment they take
down their scaffolding--nay, while it is yet standing--the
dissolution begins. All their complicated structure of weights,
counterweights, thr