A life
spent in prayer and alms giving is really as insane as a life
spent in cursing and picking pockets: the effect of everybody
doing it would be equally disastrous. The superstitious tolerance
so long accorded to monks and nuns is inevitably giving way to a
very general and very natural practice of confiscating their
retreats and expelling them from their country, with the result
that they come to England and Ireland, where they are partly
unnoticed and partly encouraged because they conduct technical
schools and teach our girls softer speech and gentler manners than
our comparatively ruffianly elementary teachers. But they are
still full of the notion that because it is possible for men to
attain the summit of Mont Blanc and stay there for an hour, it is
possible for them to live there. Children are punished and scolded
for not living there; and adults take serious offence if it is not
assumed that they live there.
As a matter of fact, ethical strain is just as bad for us as
physical strain. It is desirable that the normal pitch of conduct
at which men are not conscious of being particularly virtuous,
although they feel mean when they fall below it, should be raised
as high as possible; but it is not desirable that they should
attempt to live above this pitch any more than that they should
habitually walk at the rate of five miles an hour or carry a
hundredweight continually on their backs.
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