If (as not unfrequently was the case) he happened to have two heads,
he would point out the elementary maxim which declares them
to be better than one. He would enlarge on the subtle modernity
of such an equipment, enabling a giant to look at a subject
from two points of view, or to correct himself with promptitude.
But Jack was the champion of the enduring human standards,
of the principle of one man one head and one man one conscience,
of the single head and the single heart and the single eye.
Jack was quite unimpressed by the question of whether the giant was
a particularly gigantic giant. All he wished to know was whether
he was a good giant--that is, a giant who was any good to us.
What were the giant's religious views; what his views on politics
and the duties of the citizen? Was he fond of children--
or fond of them only in a dark and sinister sense ? To use a fine
phrase for emotional sanity, was his heart in the right place?
Jack had sometimes to cut him up with a sword in order to find out.
The old and correct story of Jack the Giant-Killer is simply the whole
story of man; if it were understood we should need no Bibles or histories.
But the modern world in particular does not seem to understand it at all.
The modern world, like Mr. Wells is on the side of the giants;
the safest place, and therefore the meanest and the most prosaic.
The modern world, when it praises its little Caesars,
talks of being strong and brave: but it does not seem to see
the eternal paradox involved in the conjunction of these ideas.
The strong cannot be brave. Only the weak can be brave;
and yet again, in practice, only those who can be brave can be trusted,
in time of doubt, to be strong. The only way in which a giant could
really keep himself in training against the inevitable Jack would
be by continually fighting other giants ten times as big as himself.
That is by ceasing to be a giant and becoming a Jack.