Page:Chesterton - Heretics, 1905.djvu/158

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Heretics

they were above all things reasonable and respectable. They are praised as disobedient when they had only one great virtuecivic obedience. They are envied and admired as shamelessly happy when they had only one great sindespair.

Mr. Lowes Dickinson, the most pregnant and provocative of recent writers on this and similar subjects, is far too solid a man to have fallen into this old error of the mere anarchy of Paganism. In order to make hay of that Hellenic enthusiasm which has as its ideal mere appetite and egotism, it is not necessary to know much philosophy, but merely to know a little Greek. Mr. Lowes Dickinson knows a great deal of philosophy, and also a great deal of Greek, and his error, if error he has, is not that of the crude hedonist. But the contrast which he offers between Christianity and Paganism in the matter of moral idealsa contrast which he states very ably in a paper

called "How long halt ye?" which appeared in the Independent Reviewdoes, I think, contain an error of a deeper kind. According to him, the ideal of Paganism was not, indeed, a mere frenzy of lust and liberty and caprice, but was an ideal of full and satisfied humanity. According to him, the ideal of Christianity was

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