“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 with an infinite appreciation of everything, and yet you have not the humour to stand aside and laugh at yourself.”

“I am a coward, as I have told you,” said the other dourly.

“No, you are not.  But you can’t bring yourself down to the world of compromises, which is the world of action.  You have lost the practical touch.  You muddled your fight with Stocks because you couldn’t get out of touch with your own little world in practice, however you might manage it in theory.  You can’t be single-hearted.  Twenty impulses are always pulling different ways with you, and the result is that you become an unhappy, self-conscious waverer.”

Lewis was staring into the fire, and the older man leaned forward and put his hand very tenderly on his shoulder.

“I don’t want to speak about the thing which gives you most pain, old chap; but I think you have spoiled your chances in the same way in another matter-the most important matter a man can have to do with, though it ill becomes a cynical bachelor like myself to say it.”