That is why
Christianity never got any grip of the world until it virtually
reduced its claims on the ordinary citizen's attention to a couple
of hours every seventh day, and let him alone on week-days. If the
fanatics who are preoccupied day in and day out with their
salvation were healthy, virtuous, and wise, the Laodiceanism of
the ordinary man might be regarded as a deplorable shortcoming;
but, as a matter of fact, no more frightful misfortune could
threaten us than a general spread of fanaticism. What people call
goodness has to be kept in check just as carefully as what they
call badness; for the human constitution will not stand very much
of either without serious psychological mischief, ending in
insanity or crime. The fact that the insanity may be privileged,
as Savonarola's was up to the point of wrecking the social life of
Florence, does not alter the case. We always hesitate to treat a
dangerously good man as a lunatic because he may turn out to be a
prophet in the true sense: that is, a man of exceptional sanity
who is in the right when we are in the wrong. However necessary it
may have been to get rid of Savonarola, it was foolish to poison
Socrates and burn St. Joan of Arc. But it is none the less
necessary to take a firm stand against the monstrous proposition
that because certain attitudes and sentiments may be heroic and
admirable at some momentous crisis, they should or can be
maintained at the same pitch continuously through life.
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