So our attitude to the giant of the world must not merely be increasing delicacy or increasing contempt:  it must be one particular proportion of the two—­which is exactly right.  We must have in us enough reverence for all things outside us to make us tread fearfully on the grass.  We must also have enough disdain for all things outside us, to make us, on due occasion, spit at the stars.  Yet these two things (if we are to be good or happy) must be combined, not in any combination, but in one particular combination.  The perfect happiness of men on the earth (if it ever comes) will not be a flat and solid thing, like the satisfaction of animals.  It will be an exact and perilous balance; like that of a desperate romance.  Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures, and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them.

This, then, is our second requirement for the ideal of progress.  First, it must be fixed; second, it must be composite.  It must not (if it is to satisfy our souls) be the mere victory of some one thing swallowing up everything else, love or pride or peace or adventure; it must be a definite picture composed of these elements in their best proportion and relation.  I am not concerned at this moment to deny that some such good culmination may be, by the constitution of things, reserved for the human race.  I only point out that if this composite happiness is fixed for us it must be fixed by some mind; for only a mind can place the exact proportions of a composite happiness.  If the beatification of the world is a mere work of nature, then it must be as simple as the freezing of the world, or the burning up of the world.  But if the beatification of the world is not a work of nature but a work of art, then it involves an artist.  And here again my contemplation was cloven by the ancient voice which said, “I could have told you all this a long time ago.  If there is any certain progress it can only be my kind of progress, the progress towards a complete city of virtues and dominations where righteousness and peace contrive to kiss each other.  An impersonal force might be leading you to a wilderness of perfect flatness or a peak of perfect height.  But only a personal God can possibly be leading you (if, indeed, you are being led) to a city with just streets and architectural proportions, a city in which each of you can contribute exactly the right amount of your own colour to the many coloured coat of Joseph.”

Twice again, therefore, Christianity had come in with the exact answer that I required.  I had said, “The ideal must be fixed,” and the Church had answered, “Mine is literally fixed, for it existed before anything else.”  I said secondly, “It must be artistically combined, like a picture”; and the Church answered, “Mine is quite literally a picture, for I know who painted it.”  Then I went on to the third thing, which, as it seemed to me, was needed for an Utopia or goal of progress.  And of all the three it is infinitely the hardest to express.  Perhaps it might be put thus:  that we need watchfulness even in Utopia, lest we fall from Utopia as we fell from Eden.