Formalism, as we have seen, is never merely negative in its consequences; for any moral untruth, since it replaces a truth, cannot fail to pervert life. Thus one may be persuaded with the author whom I have just quoted to count the world, "not an Inn, but an Hospital; and a place not to live, but to dye in." [31] I do not suppose that any one ever succeeded in wholly resisting the hospitality of this world, and one suspects that Thomas Browne partook not a little of its good cheer; but the opinion is false notwithstanding, and if false, then confusing and misleading. This world is not a place to suffer in, nor even a place to be mended in, but the only opportunity of achievement and service that can be certainly {119} counted on. The good is in the making here, if it is in the making anywhere. To neglect life here is equivalent to forfeiting it altogether. Religious formalism may induce not only a default of present opportunity and responsibility, but also a substitution for good living of an emotional improvisation on the theme of absolute perfection, like that in the _Book of the Courtier_: If, then, the beauties which with these dim eyes of ours we daily see in corruptible bodies, . . . seem to us so fair and gracious that they often kindle most ardent fire in us, . . . what happy wonder, what blessed awe, shall we think is that which fills the souls that attain to the vision of divine beauty! What sweet flame, what delightful burning, must that be thought which springs from the fountain of supreme and true beauty!--which is the source of every other beauty, which never waxes nor wanes: ever fair, and of its own self most simple in every part alike; like only to itself, and partaking of none other; but fair in such wise that all other fair things are fair because they derive their beauty from it. This is that beauty identical with highest good.[32] Now I do not want to be understood as condemning this mysticism out of hand. I mean only that while it is eloquent and purifying, it is, nevertheless, not illuminating; and that if it be mistaken for illumination, it does in fact hide the light. It has no meaning whatsoever except the general idea of the superlative, and if it be not attached to some definite content drawn from {120} experience of acts and their consequences, it does but substitute a phrase for the proper objects of action and an emotion for provident conduct.