has a genuine mental power. His account of his reason for
leaving the Roman Catholic Church is possibly the most admirable
tribute to that communion which has been written of late years.
For the fact of the matter is, that the weakness which has rendered
barren the many brilliancies of Mr. Moore is actually that weakness
which the Roman Catholic Church is at its best in combating.
Mr. Moore hates Catholicism because it breaks up the house
of looking-glasses in which he lives. Mr. Moore does not dislike
so much being asked to believe in the spiritual existence
of miracles or sacraments, but he does fundamentally dislike
being asked to believe in the actual existence of other people.
Like his master Pater and all the aesthetes, his real quarrel with
life is that it is not a dream that can be moulded by the dreamer.
It is not the dogma of the reality of the other world that troubles him,
but the dogma of the reality of this world.

The truth is that the tradition of Christianity (which is still the only
coherent ethic of Europe) rests on two or three paradoxes or mysteries
which can easily be impugned in argument and as easily justified in life.
One of them, for instance, is the paradox of hope or faith--
that the more hopeless is the situation the more hopeful must be the man.
Stevenson understood this, and consequently Mr. Moore cannot
understand Stevenson. Another is the paradox of charity or chivalry
that the weaker a thing is the more it should be respected,
that the more indefensible a thing is the more it should appeal
to us for a certain kind of defence. Thackeray understood this,
and therefore Mr. Moore does not understand Thackeray. Now, one of
these very practical and working mysteries in the Christian tradition,
and one which the Roman Catholic Church, as I say, has done her best
work in singling out, is the conception of the sinfulness of pride.