temptation (for tempting it is) to call men like Duerer and Goethe
evangelists. They are teachers who charm as well as inform us, as Jesus
was; but they are not evangelists in the sense that he was, for they did
not deal directly with human life where it is forced most against its
distinctive desire for increase in nobility, or is most obviously
degraded by having betrayed it.'[11]


VI

I have often heard it objected that Jesus is too feminine an ideal, too
much based on renunciation and the effort to make the best of failure.
No doubt that as women are, by the necessity of their function, more
liable to the ship-wreck of their hopes, the bankruptcy of their powers,
they have been drawn to cling to this hope of salvation in greater
numbers, and with more fervour; so that the most general idea of Jesus
may be a feminine one. It does not follow that this is the most correct
or the best: every object, every person will appear differently to
different natures. And it still remains true that there have been a
great many men of very various types who have drawn strength and beauty
from the contemplation and reverence of Jesus. That this ideal is too
much based on making the best of failure is an objection that makes very
little impression on me, for I think I perceive that failure is one of
the most constant and widespread conditions of the universe, and even
more certainly of human life.


VII

It remains now to see in what degree these ideas were felt or made