o the temporary
idols of their tribe. Taking refuge in monasteries was as much an idol
of the tribe in the middle ages, as bearing a hand in the world's work
is to-day. Saint Francis or Saint Bernard, were they living to-day,
would undoubtedly be leading consecrated lives of some sort, but quite
as undoubtedly they would not lead them in retirement. Our animosity
to special historic manifestations must not lead us to give away the
saintly impulses in their essential nature to the tender mercies of
inimical critics.

The most inimical critic of the saintly impulses whom I know is
Nietzsche. He contrasts them with the worldly passions as we find
these embodied in the predaceous military character, altogether to the
advantage of the latter. Your born saint, it must be confessed, has
something about him which often makes the gorge of a carnal man rise,
so it will be worth while to consider the contrast in question more
fully.

Dislike of the saintly nature seems to be a negative result of the
biologically useful instinct of welcoming leadership, and glorifying
the chief of the tribe. The chief is the potential, if not the actual
tyrant, the masterful, overpowering man of prey. We confess our
inferiority and grovel before him. We quail under his glance, and are
at the same time proud of owning so dangerous a lord. Such instinctive
and submissive hero-worship must have been indispensable in primeval
tribal life. In the endless wars of those times, leaders were
absolutely needed for the tribe's survival. If there were any tribes
who owned no leaders, they can have left no issue to narrate their
doom. The leaders always had good consciences, for conscience in them
coalesced with will, and those who looked on their face were as much
smitten with wonder at their freedom from inner restraint as with awe
at the energy of their outward performances.

Compared with these beaked and taloned graspers of the world, saints
are herbivorous animals, tame and harmless barn-yard poultry. There
are saints whose beard you may, if you ever care to, pull with
impunity. Such a man excites no thrills of wonder veiled in terror;
his conscience is full of scruples and returns; he stuns us neither by
his inward freedom nor his outward power; and unless he found within us
an altogether different faculty of admiration to appeal to, we should
pass him by with contempt.

In point of fact, he does appeal to a different faculty. Reenact