Frogs'
as on the wisdom of the 'Republic.' It is all a mean shame of joy. When
we come out from a performance of the 'Midsummer Night's Dream' we feel
as near to the stars as when we come out from 'King Lear.' For the joy
of these works is older than sorrow, their extravagance is saner than
wisdom, their love is stronger than death.

The old masters of a healthy madness, Aristophanes or Rabelais or
Shakespeare, doubtless had many brushes with the precisians or ascetics
of their day, but we cannot but feel that for honest severity and
consistent self-maceration they would always have had respect. But what
abysses of scorn, inconceivable to any modern, would they have reserved
for an aesthetic type and movement which violated morality and did not
even find pleasure, which outraged sanity and could not attain to
exuberance, which contented itself with the fool's cap without the
bells!

* * * * *

A DEFENCE OF HUMILITY

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has to-day all the
exhilaration of a vice. Moral truisms have been so much disputed that
they have begun to sparkle like so many brilliant paradoxes. And
especially (in this age of egoistic idealism) there is about one who
defends humility something inexpressibly rakish.

It is no part of my intention to defend humility on practical grounds.
Practical grounds are uninteresting, and, moreover, on practical grounds
the case for humility is overwhelming. We all know that the 'divine
glory of the ego' is socially a great nuisance; we all do actually value
our friends for modesty, freshness, and simplicity of heart. Whatever
may be the reason, we all do warmly respect humility--in other people.

But the matter must go deeper than this. If the grounds of humility are
found only in social convenience, they may be quite trivial and
temporary. The egoists may be the martyrs of a nobler dispensation,
agonizing for a more arduous ideal. To judge from the comparative lack
of ease in their social manner, this seems a reasonable suggestion.

There is one thing that must be seen at the outset of the study of
humility from an intrinsic and eternal point of view. The new philosophy
of self-esteem and self-assertion declares that humility is a vice. If
it be so, it is quite clear that it is one of those vices which are an
integral part of original sin. It follows with the precision of
clockwork every one of the great joys of life. No o