ms,
and it flourishes especially in Calvinism, because Calvinism is the
most non-Christian of Christian systems. But like everything else that
inheres in the natural senses and spirit of man, it has something in
it; it is not stark unreason. If it is an ill (and it generally is),
it is one of the ills that flesh is heir to, but he is the lawful
heir. And like many other dubious or dangerous human instincts or
appetites, it is sometimes useful as a warning against worse things.

Now the trouble of the nineteenth century very largely came from the
loss of this; the loss of what we may call the natural and heathen
mysticism. When modern critics say that Julius Caesar did not believe
in Jupiter, or that Pope Leo did not believe in Catholicism, they
overlook an essential difference between those ages and ours. Perhaps
Julius did not believe in Jupiter; but he did not disbelieve in
Jupiter. There was nothing in his philosophy, or the philosophy of
that age, that could forbid him to think that there was a spirit
personal and predominant in the world. But the modern materialists are
not permitted to doubt; they are forbidden to believe. Hence, while
the heathen might avail himself of accidental omens, queer
coincidences or casual dreams, without knowing for certain whether
they were really hints from heaven or premonitory movements in his own
brain, the modern Christian turned heathen must not entertain such
notions at all, but must reject the oracle as the altar. The modern
sceptic was drugged against all that was natural in the supernatural.
And this was why the modern tyrant marched upon his doom, as a tyrant
literally pagan might possibly not have done.

There is one idea of this kind that runs through most popular tales
(those, for instance, on which Shakespeare is so often based)--an idea
that is profoundly moral even if the tales are immoral. It is what
may be called the flaw in the deed: the idea that, if I take my
advantage to the full, I shall hear of something to my disadvantage.
Thus Midas fell into a fallacy about the currency; and soon had reason
to become something more than a Bimetallist. Thus Macbeth had a
fallacy about forestry; he could not see the trees for the wood. He
forgot that, though a place cannot be moved, the trees that grow on it
can. Thus Shylock had a fallacy of physiology; he forgot that, if you
break into the house of life, you find it a bloody house in the most
emphatic sense. But the modern