Renan even represented the righteous anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous breakdown after the idyllic expectations of Galilee.  As if there were any inconsistency between having a love for humanity and having a hatred for inhumanity!  Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist.  Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist.  In our present atmosphere such cavils are comprehensible enough.  The love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred of a tyrant.  The hatred of a hero is more generous than the love of a philanthropist.  There is a huge and heroic sanity of which moderns can only collect the fragments.  There is a giant of whom we see only the lopped arms and legs walking about.  They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by His insane magnificence and His insane meekness.  They have parted His garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; though the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout.

CHAPTER IV—­The Ethics of Elfland

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this:  “Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is.”  Thus, at least, venerable and philanthropic old men now in their honoured graves used to talk to me when I was a boy.  But since then I have grown up and have discovered that these philanthropic old men were telling lies.  What has really happened is exactly the opposite of what they said would happen.  They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians.  Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was.  What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics.  I am still as much concerned as ever about the Battle of Armageddon; but I am not so much concerned about the General Election.  As a babe I leapt up on my mother’s knee at the mere mention of it.  No; the vision is always solid and reliable.  The vision is always a fact.  It is the reality that is often a fraud.  As much as I ever did, more than I ever did, I believe in Liberalism.  But there was a rosy time of innocence when I believed in Liberals.

I take this instance of one of the enduring faiths because, having now to trace the roots of my personal speculation, this may be counted, I think, as the only positive bias.  I was brought up a Liberal, and have always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity.  If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle