If you wish to understand virtue you must be sub-vicious; for the
really virtuous man, who is fully under grace, will be virtuous
unconsciously and will know nothing about it. Unless a man is out-
and-out virtuous he is sub-vicious.
Virtue is, as it were, the repose of sleep or death. Vice is the
awakening to the knowledge of good and evil--without which there is
no life worthy of the name. Sleep is, in a way, a happier, more
peaceful state than waking and, in a way, death may be said to be
better than life, but it is in a very small way. We feel such talk
to be blasphemy against good life and, whatever we may say in death's
favour, so long as we do not blow our brains out we show that we do
not mean to be taken seriously. To know good, other than as a heavy
sleeper, we must know vice also. There cannot, as Bacon said, be a
"Hold fast that which is good" without a "Prove all things" going
before it. There is no knowledge of good without a knowledge of evil
also, and this is why all nations have devils as well as gods, and
regard them with sneaking kindness. God without the devil is dead,
being alone.
Lucifer
We call him at once the Angel of Light and the Angel of Darkness: is
this because we instinctively feel that no one can know much till he
has sinned much--or because we feel that extremes meet, or how?
The Oracle in Erewhon
The answer given by the oracle was originally written concerning any
vice--say drunkenness, but it applies to many another--and I wrote
not "sins" but "knows": {26}
He who knows aught
Knows more than he ought;
But he who knows nought
Has much to be taught.
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