But there is quite another kind of sympathy the sympathy with a thing because it is different.No one will say that Rembrandt did not sympathise with an old woman;but no one will say that Rembrandt painted like an old woman.No one will say that Reynolds did not appreciate children;but no one will say he did it childishly.The supreme instance of this divine division is sex,and that explains (what I could never understand in my youth)why Christendom called the soul the bride of God.
For real love is an intense realisation of the "separateness"of all our souls.The most heroic and human love-poetry of the world is never mere passion;precisely because mere passion really is a melting back into Nature,a meeting of the waters.And water is plunging and powerful;but it is only powerful downhill.The high and human love-poetry is all about division rather than identity;and in the great love-poems even the man as he embraces the woman sees her,in the same instant,afar off;a virgin and a stranger.
For the first injustice,of which we have spoken,still recurs;and if we grant that the East has a right to its difference,it is not realised in what we differ.That nursery tale from nowhere about St.George and the Dragon really expresses best the relation between the West and the East.
There were many other differences,calculated to arrest even the superficial eye,between a saint and a dragon.But the essential difference was simply this:that the Dragon did want to eat St.George;whereas St.George would have felt a strong distaste for eating the Dragon.In most of the stories he killed the Dragon.In many of the stories he not only spared,but baptised it.But in neither case did the Christian have any appetite for cold dragon.The Dragon,however,really has an appetite for cold Christian--and especially for cold Christianity.