Since every man must love himself in a different way--unless he is a materialist or a prig--he must love his neighbour in a different way. So Christ’s commandment is as large as life, and its meaning can never be fixed. I sometimes hate myself: and my neighbour as myself. Life makes no absolute statement. It is all Call and Answer. As soon as the Call ceases, the Answer is invalid. And till the Answer comes, a Call is but a crying in the wilderness. And every Answer must wait until it hears the Call. Till the Call comes, the Answer is but an unborn fœtus. And so it is. Life is so wonderful and complex, and _always_ relative. A man’s soul is a perpetual call and answer. He can never be the call and the answer in one: between the dark God and the incarnate man: between the dark soul of woman, and the opposite dark soul of man: and finally, between the souls of man and man, strangers to one another, but answerers. So it is for ever, the eternal weaving of calls and answers, and the fabric of life woven and perishing again. But the calls never cease, and the answers never fail for long. And when the fabric becomes grey and machine-made, some strange clarion-call makes men start to smash it up. So it is. _Blessed are the pure in heart._ That is absolute truth, a statement of living relativity, because the pure in heart are those who quiver to the dark God, to the call of woman, and to the call of men. The pure in heart are the listeners and the answerers. But Rameses II. was no doubt as pure in heart as John the Evangel. Indeed perhaps purer, since John was an _insister_. To be pure in heart, man must listen to the dark gods as well as to the white gods, to the call to blood-sacrifice as well as to the eucharist. _Blessed are the poor in spirit._ It depends. If it means _listening_. Not if it means taking up a permanent attitude. _Blessed are the peacemakers._ It depends. If it means _answering_. Not if it means enforcing the peace, like policemen. _Blessed are the meek._ It depends on the occasion. _Blessed are they that mourn._ It depends altogether. _Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness._ Ah, yes, but the righteousness of the profound listener, and of the answerer who will answer come what may. Not any other righteousness of the commandment sort. _Blessed are ye when men shall despise you._ Nay, nay, it is rather: _unblessed_ are the despisers---- After all his terrific upheaval, Richard Lovat at last gave it up, and went to sleep. A man must even know how to give up his own earnestness, when its hour is over, and not to bother about anything any more, when he’s bothered enough. CHAP: XIV. BITS.