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The young Pliny, Governor of Bithynia, had written to ask Trajan how he was to deal with the Christians, whose blamelessness of life he fully admitted, but whose doctrines, he said, had emptied the temples of the gods, and exasperated their worshippers.
The fact has priority over the dogmas, and is altogether too strong to need the patronizing special-pleading they suggest. Instead of going into the metaphysics of the question about the lawfulness and blamelessness of humor shown or humor relished, suppose we cut the knot by a delightful illustration of the compatibility of humor with the highest type of character.
The moral guilt or blamelessness in like manner has nothing to do with the result; it turns upon the question whether a sufficient number of reasonable people placed as the actor was placed would have done as the actor has done. At that time it was universally admitted that to spare the rod was to spoil the child, and St Paul had placed disobedience to parents in very ugly company.
Indeed, it would have been a paltry satisfaction to me just then if I could have found her to blame. Her blamelessness irritated my self-complacence as the light irritates defective eyes. "I am due at the hospital in twenty-two minutes," I went on, excitedly. "Chirugeon is behaving like Apollyon. If I'm not there to handle him, nobody will. The whole staff are afraid of him everybody but me.
The man is indeed fortunate who can go through a long career without blame, and how much more fortunate if he adds great achievement to blamelessness. You have the singular felicity of having been always a fighting man, and having gone through life without a wound. I congratulate you most on your physical and mental ability to enjoy the rest you have chosen and earned....
Instead of forsaking this wicked world, the men of the Renaissance accept, love, and cultivate the world, with all its pomp and vanities; they believe in the blamelessness of natural life and in its perfectibility; or they cling at least to a noble ambition to perfect it and a glorious ability to enjoy it.
I have always been fond of Josh Billings's remark that "it is much easier to be a harmless dove than a wise serpent." There are plenty of decent legislators, and plenty of able legislators; but the blamelessness and the fighting edge are not always combined. Both qualities are necessary for the man who is to wage active battle against the powers that prey.
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