Then follows,
as so often in the Gospels, the "how much more" which is like a
celestial flight of stairs, a ladder of imaginative logic. Indeed this
_a fortiori_, and this power of thinking on three levels, is (I may
remark incidentally) a thing very much needed in modern discussion.
Many minds apparently cannot stretch to three dimensions,
or to thinking that a cube can go beyond a surface as a surface
goes beyond a line; for instance, that the citizen is infinitely
above all ranks, and yet the soul is infinitely above the citizen.
But we are only concerned at the moment with the sides of this
many-sided mystery which happen to be really in sympathy with
the modern mood. Judged even by our modern tests of emancipated
art or ideal economics, it is admitted that Christ understood all
that is rather crudely embodied in Socialism or the Simple Life.
I purposely insist first on this optimistic, I might almost say this
pantheistic or even this pagan aspect of the Christian Gospels.
For it is only when we understand that Christ, considered merely
as a prophet, can be and is a popular leader in the love of natural
things, that we can feel that tremendous and tragic energy of his
testimony to an ugly reality, the existence of unnatural things.
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