ople who
had the sense of beauty as strongly as anyone who ever lived--what he said
to Hogg, when Hogg told him how he had shut up an impertinent young
ruffian? 'I wish I could be as exclusive as you are,' said Shelley with a
sigh, feeling, no doubt, a sense of real failure--'but I cannot!' Shelley's
weakness was a much finer thing than Hogg's strength. I don't say that
Shelley was perfect: his imagination ran away with him to an extent that
may be called untruthful; he idealised people, and then threw them over
when he discovered them to be futile; but that is the right kind of mistake
to make: the wrong kind of mistake is to see people too clearly, and to
take for granted that they are not as delightful as they seem."

"You mean that if one must choose," said Vincent, "it is better to be a
fool than a knave."

"Why, of course," said Father Payne; "but don't call it 'a fool'--call it
'a child': that's the kind of beauty I mean, the unsuspicious, guileless,
trustful, affectionate temper--that to begin with: and you must learn, as
you go on, a quality which the child has not always got--a sense of humour.
That is what experience ought to give you--a power, that is, of seeing what
is really there, and of being more amused than shocked by it. That helps
you to distinguish real knavishness from childish faults. A great many of
the absurd, perverse, unkind, unpleasant things which people do are not
knavish at all--they are silly, selfish little diplomacies, guileless
obedience to conventions, unreasonable deference to imaginary authority.
People don't mean any harm by such tricks--they are the subterfuges of
weakness: but when you come upon real cynical deliberate knavishness--that
is different. There's nothing amusing about that. But you must be indulgent
to weakness, and only severe with strength."

"I'm getting a little confused," said Vincent.

"Not as much as I am," said Father Payne; "I don't know where I have got
to, I am sure. I seem to have changed hares! But one thing does emerge, and
that is, that a sort of inspired good taste is the only thing which can
regulate morals. The root of all morals is ultimately beauty. Why are we
not all as greedy and dirty as the old cave-men? For the simple reason that
something, for which he was not responsible, began to work in the caveman's
mind. He said to himself, 'This is not the way to behave: it would be nicer
not to have killed Mary when I was angry.' And then, when that