“By admiring it,” said Father Payne.  “I don’t say that the people who have got it are conscious of it—­in fact they are generally quite unconscious of it.  Do you remember what Shelley—­who was, I think, one of the people who had the sense of beauty as strongly as anyone who ever lived—­what he said to Hogg, when Hogg told him how he had shut up an impertinent young ruffian?  ‘I wish I could be as exclusive as you are,’ said Shelley with a sigh, feeling, no doubt, a sense of real failure—­’but I cannot!’ Shelley’s weakness was a much finer thing than Hogg’s strength.  I don’t say that Shelley was perfect:  his imagination ran away with him to an extent that may be called untruthful; he idealised people, and then threw them over when he discovered them to be futile; but that is the right kind of mistake to make:  the wrong kind of mistake is to see people too clearly, and to take for granted that they are not as delightful as they seem.”

“You mean that if one must choose,” said Vincent, “it is better to be a fool than a knave.”

“Why, of course,” said Father Payne; “but don’t call it ’a fool’—­call it ‘a child’:  that’s the kind of beauty I mean, the unsuspicious, guileless, trustful, affectionate temper—­that to begin with:  and you must learn, as you go on, a quality which the child has not always got—­a sense of humour.  That is what experience ought to give you—­a power, that is, of seeing what is really there, and of being more amused than shocked by it.  That helps you to distinguish real knavishness from childish faults.  A great many of the absurd, perverse, unkind, unpleasant things which people do are not knavish at all—­they are silly, selfish little diplomacies, guileless obedience to conventions, unreasonable deference to imaginary authority.  People don’t mean any harm by such tricks—­they are the subterfuges of weakness:  but when you come upon real cynical deliberate knavishness—­that is different.  There’s nothing amusing about that.  But you must be indulgent to weakness, and only severe with strength.”

“I’m getting a little confused,” said Vincent.

“Not as much as I am,” said Father Payne; “I don’t know where I have got to, I am sure.  I seem to have changed hares!  But one thing does emerge, and that is, that a sort of inspired good taste is the only thing which can regulate morals.  The root of all morals is ultimately beauty.  Why are we not all as greedy and dirty as the old cave-men?  For the simple reason that something, for which he was not responsible, began to work in the caveman’s mind.  He said to himself, ’This is not the way to behave:  it would be nicer not to have killed Mary when I was angry.’  And then, when that impulse is once started, human beings go too fast, and want to carry out their new discoveries of rules and principles too far:  and you must have a regulating force:  and if you can find a better force than the instinct for what is beautiful, tell me, and I’ll undertake to talk for at least as long about it.  I must stop!  My sense of beauty warns me that I am becoming a bore.”