Those who look at the matter most superficially regard paradox as something which belongs to jesting and light journalism.  Paradox of this kind is to be found in the saying of the dandy, in the decadent comedy, “Life is much too important to be taken seriously.”  Those who look at the matter a little more deeply or delicately see that paradox is a thing which especially belongs to all religions.  Paradox of this kind is to be found in such a saying as “The meek shall inherit the earth.”  But those who see and feel the fundamental fact of the matter know that paradox is a thing which belongs not to religion only, but to all vivid and violent practical crises of human living.  This kind of paradox may be clearly perceived by anybody who happens to be hanging in mid-space, clinging to one arm of the Cross of St. Paul’s.

Father Michael in spite of his years, and in spite of his asceticism (or because of it, for all I know), was a very healthy and happy old gentleman.  And as he swung on a bar above the sickening emptiness of air, he realized, with that sort of dead detachment which belongs to the brains of those in peril, the deathless and hopeless contradiction which is involved in the mere idea of courage.  He was a happy and healthy old gentleman and therefore he was quite careless about it.  And he felt as every man feels in the taut moment of such terror that his chief danger was terror itself; his only possible strength would be a coolness amounting to carelessness, a carelessness amounting almost to a suicidal swagger.  His one wild chance of coming out safely would be in not too desperately desiring to be safe.  There might be footholds down that awful facade, if only he could not care whether they were footholds or no.  If he were foolhardy he might escape; if he were wise he would stop where he was till he dropped from the cross like a stone.  And this antinomy kept on repeating itself in his mind, a contradiction as large and staring as the immense contradiction of the Cross; he remembered having often heard the words, “Whosoever shall lose his life the same shall save it.”  He remembered with a sort of strange pity that this had always been made to mean that whoever lost his physical life should save his spiritual life.  Now he knew the truth that is known to all fighters, and hunters, and climbers of cliffs.  He knew that even his animal life could only be saved by a considerable readiness to lose it.

Some will think it improbable that a human soul swinging desperately in mid-air should think about philosophical inconsistencies.  But such extreme states are dangerous things to dogmatize about.  Frequently they produce a certain useless and joyless activity of the mere intellect, thought not only divorced from hope but even from desire.  And if it is impossible to dogmatize about such states, it is still more impossible to describe them.  To this spasm of sanity and clarity in Michael’s mind succeeded a spasm