Celsus forgot for the moment that the same sort of criticism had been made upon Socrates. "'You had better be done,' said Critias, 'with those shoemakers of yours, and the carpenters and coppersmiths. They must be pretty well down at the heel by now--considering the way you have talked them round.' 'Yes,' said Charicles, 'and the cowherds too.'"[5] But six centuries had made another man of Socrates. His ideas, interpreted by Plato and others, had altered the whole thinking of the Greek world; his Silenus-face had grown beautiful by {118} association; the physiognomy of his mind and speech was no longer so striking; he was a familiar figure, and his words and phrases were current coin, accepted without question. But to Celsus Jesus was no such figure; he had not the traditions and preconceptions which have in turn obscured for us the features of Jesus; there was nothing in Jesus either hallowed or familiar, and one glance revealed a physiognomy. That he did not like it is of less importance. [Sidenote: The words of Jesus] Taking the saying in question, we find, as Celsus did, absurdity upon the face of it, and, as he also did, something else at the heart of it--a contrast between surface and inner value broad as the gulf between the common sense which men gather from experience and the morality which Jesus read beneath human nature. Among the words of Jesus there are many such sayings, and it is clear that he himself saw and designed the contrasts which we feel as we read them. This sense of contrast is one of the ground-factors of humour generally, perhaps the one indispensable factor; it is always present in the highest humour. If we then take the words of Jesus, as they struck those who first heard them--or as they struck Celsus--we cannot help remarking at once a strong individual character in them, one element in which is humour,--always one of the most personal and individual of all marks of physiognomy.