t
have that direct practical virtue which forgets itself and sees only its
work. Parsons will tell you that all virtue is self-sacrifice, and they
are right, though not in the way they mean. It may all seem a tissue of
contradictions. You must not pitch on too fanciful a goal, nor, on the
other hand, must you think on yourself. And it is a contradiction which
only resolves itself in practice, one of those anomalies on which the
world is built up."

Lewis nodded his head.

"And the moral of it all is that there are two sorts of people who will
never do any good on this planet. One is the class which makes formulas
and shallow little ideals its gods and has no glimpse of human needs and
the plain issues of life. The other is the egotist whose eye is always
filled with his own figure, who investigates his motives, and hesitates
and finicks, till Death knocks him on the head and there is an end of
him. Of the two give me the second, for even a narrow little
egotistical self is better than a formula. But I pray to be delivered
from both."

"'Then who shall stand if Thou, O Lord, dost mark iniquity?'" Lewis
quoted.

"There are two men only who will not be ashamed to look their work in
the face in the end--the brazen opportunist and the rigid Puritan.
Suppose you had some desperate frontier work to get through with and a
body of men to pick for it, whom would you take? Not the ordinary,
colourless, respectable being, and still less academic nonentities! If
I had my pick, my companions should either be the narrowest religionists
or frank, unashamed blackguards. I should go to the Calvinists and the
fanatics for choice, but if I could not get them then I should have the
rankers. For, don't you see, the first would have the fear of God in
them, and that somehow keeps a man from fearing anything else. They
would do their work because they believed it to be their duty. And the
second would have the love of the sport in them, and they should also be
made to dwell in the fear of me. They would do their work because they
liked it, and liked me, and I told them to do it."

"I agree with you absolutely," said Lewis. "I never thought otherwise."

"Good," said Wratislaw. "Now for my application. You've had the
misfortune to fall between the two stools, Lewie. You're too clever for
a Puritan and too good for a ranker. You're too finicking and
high-strung and fanciful for a prosaic world. You think yourself the
laughing philosopher