He oscillates between a profound abasement and a paradoxical
elation of the spirit. To be a Calvinist philosophically is to feel a
fierce pleasure in the existence of misery, especially of one's own,
in that this misery seems to manifest the fact that the Absolute is
irresponsible or infinite or holy. Human nature, it feels, is totally
depraved: to have the instincts and motives that we necessarily have
is a great scandal, and we must suffer for it; but that scandal is
requisite, since otherwise the serious importance of being as we ought
to be would not have been vindicated.
To those of us who have not an agonised conscience this system may
seem fantastic and even unintelligible; yet it is logically and
intently thought out from its emotional premises. It can take
permanent possession of a deep mind here and there, and under certain
conditions it can become epidemic. Imagine, for instance, a small
nation with an intense vitality, but on the verge of ruin, ecstatic
and distressful, having a strict and minute code of laws, that paints
life in sharp and violent chiaroscuro, all pure righteousness and
black abominations, and exaggerating the consequences of both perhaps
to infinity. Such a people were the Jews after the exile, and again
the early Protestants.
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