A very high standard, again, involves the possession of rare virtues, and
rare virtues are like rare plants or animals, things that have not been
able to hold their own in the world. A virtue to be serviceable must,
like gold, be alloyed with some commoner but more durable metal.
People divide off vice and virtue as though they were two things, neither
of which had with it anything of the other. This is not so. There is no
useful virtue which has not some alloy of vice, and hardly any vice, if
any, which carries not with it a little dash of virtue; virtue and vice
are like life and death, or mind and matter--things which cannot exist
without being qualified by their opposite. The most absolute life
contains death, and the corpse is still in many respects living; so also
it has been said, "If thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done
amiss," which shows that even the highest ideal we can conceive will yet
admit so much compromise with vice as shall countenance the poor abuses
of the time, if they are not too outrageous. That vice pays homage to
virtue is notorious; we call this hypocrisy; there should be a word found
for the homage which virtue not unfrequently pays, or at any rate would
be wise in paying, to vice.
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