That was the problem which Paganism tried to solve: that was the problem which I think Christianity solved and solved in a very strange way.
Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite.

Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously.

Let us follow for a moment the clue of the martyr and the suicide; and take the case of courage.

No quality has ever so much addled the brains and tangled the definitions of merely rational sages.

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms.