The phrases of the street are not only forcible but subtle:
for a figure of speech can often get into a crack too small for
a definition. Phrases like "put out" or "off colour" might have
been coined by Mr. Henry James in an agony of verbal precision.
And there is no more subtle truth than that of the everyday phrase
about a man having "his heart in the right place." It involves the
idea of normal proportion; not only does a certain function exist,
but it is rightly related to other functions. Indeed, the negation
of this phrase would describe with peculiar accuracy the somewhat morbid
mercy and perverse tenderness of the most representative moderns.
If, for instance, I had to describe with fairness the character
of Mr. Bernard Shaw, I could not express myself more exactly
than by saying that he has a heroically large and generous heart;
but not a heart in the right place. And this is so of the typical
society of our time.

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern
world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues.
When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered
at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose.
The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage.
But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander
more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern
world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues
have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other
and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth;
and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care
for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.
For example, Mr. Blatchford attacks Christianity because he is mad
on one Christian virtue: the merely mystical and almost irrational